


(THEMl 




(P^BY-CHARLE' 
EQBERTCRAPPOCK 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ChapZ!?2l5Copyright 'No. 

ShelfJi;yf).42) Jw 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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BOOKS BY 

CI)arIe£i effbert CraUtiock. 

(MARY N. MURFREE.) 



IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS. Short 

Stories. i6rao, $1.2$. 
DOWN THE RAVINE. For Young People. Illus- 
trated. i6mo, $1.00. 
THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY 

MOUNTAINS. A Novel. i6mo, $1.25. 
IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel. 16100,^1.25. 
THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS. For 

Young People. i6mo, $1.00. 
THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE. A 

Novel. i6mo, $1.25. 
Vi'HERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT. A 

Novel. i6mo, $1.2$. 
HIS VANISHED STAR. A Novel. i6mo, $1.25. 
THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE MOUNTAIN. 

i6mo, $1.25. 
THE YOUNG MOUNTAINEERS. Illustrated. 

i2mo, $1.50. 
THE JUGGLER. A Novel. i6mo, $1.25. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
Boston and New York. 



THE JUGGLER 



BY 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

1/ 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPAN' 

1897 




PSaf54 

mi 



COPYRIGHT 1897 BY MARY N. MURFREE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



. ., ^^-^ 



\ 

/ ^ 



THE JUGGLER. 



I. 

Mystery was not far to seek, surely. The great 
gneissoid crags were moulded by the heat from sub- 
terranean fires in remote, unimagined aeons. From 
the deep coves, now so heavily wooded, the once 
submerging waters had long ago ebbed, following 
vmdreamed-of lures, drawn seaward or skyward, 
or enguKed in still lower depths, — who can say? 
— leaving the ripple-marks on their rocky con- 
fines to tell of their being. In the middle of the 
bridle-path, touched by every careless passing foot, 
lay a splintered sandstone slab, the fracture reveal- 
ing a cluster of delicate, cylindrical, stem-like 
petrifactions, thus preserving, with the comprehen- 
sive significance of nature, so slight a thing as the 
record of the life of a worm long ages agone, in 
these fossil traces of primordial vermicular burrow- 
ings, here in the midst of a scene that was itself as 
a register of those stupendous revolutions the inci- 
dents of which were the subsidence of vast oceans, 
and the emergence of continents, and the develop- 
ment of the mighty agencies that made and lifted 
the mountains. All the visible world gave token of 



2 THE JUGGLER. 

the inexplicable past of creation, of the unrevealed 
future, — those thoughts of God which are very 
deep thoughts. And yet, in the bluntings of daily 
use, the limitations of dull observation, the im- 
questioning acceptance of the accustomed routine 
of nature, there might seem naught before the eye 
which was not plainly manifest, — mountain, rock, 
forest, — the mere furniture of existence. One 
hardly analyzes the breath of life as it is breathed ; 
even when considered as nearly twenty-one per 
cent, of oxygen to seventy -nine per cent, of nitro- 
gen, are we aught the wiser, for whence comes it, 
and alas, why does it go? To those creatures of 
a day, busy with the day, it seemed that mystery 
and doubt and troublous questioning had first 
entered Etowah Cove in the guise of a vagrant 
juggler, their earliest experience of a modern 
exponent of his most ancient craft. 

The light that timidly flickered out of the school- 
house windows into the bosky depths of the en- 
compassing wilderness, one night, marked a new 
era in the history of the Cove. It was the first 
"show " that had ever been given nearer than Col- 
bury, some forty miles distant, unless one might 
make so bold as to include in the term camp-meet- 
ings and revivals, weddings and funerals. The 
walls of the little log house had hitherto echoed 
naught more joyous than sermons and "experi- 
ence meetings^" or sounds of scholastic discipline, 
or the drone of the juvenile martyr reluctantly 
undergoing education. The place had long been 



THE JUGGLER. 6 

closed to secular uses, for only at infrequent inter- 
vals was the school opened, and a drought of in- 
struction still held sway. To the audience who 
had been roused from the dull routine of the fire- 
side by the startling and unprecedented announce- 
ment that a stranger-man, staying at old Tubal 
Cain Sims's cabin, was going to give a "show" 
in the schoolhouse, the flutter of excitement, the 
unwonted nocturnal jaunt hither, the joyous antici- 
pation, were almost tantamount to the delighted 
realization. The benches were arranged as for 
worship or learning, and were crowded with old 
and young, male and female, the reckless and 
barefoot, the neuralgic and shod. The men, un- 
kempt and unshaven, steadily chewed their quids 
of tobacco, and now and then spat upon the floor 
and grinned at one another. The women con- 
served a certain graver go-to-meeting air, doubt- 
less the influence of the locality, but were visibly 
fluttered. Occasionally a big sunbonnet turned 
toward another, and whispered gossip ensued, as 
before the first hymn is given out. The lighted 
tallow candles in small tin sconces against the 
walls, and a kerosene lamp on the ta^e on the 
platform, cast a subdued and mellow light over 
the assemblage. It flickered up to the brown 
rafters, where the cobwebs were many; it con- 
verted the tiny dirt-incrusted panes of the windows 
to mirror-like use, and was reflected from the 
dense darkness outside with duplications of sections 
of the audience; it shone full and bright on the 



4 THE JUGGLER. 

tall, athletic figure of the juggler, appearing sud- 
denly and swiftly from a side door, and bowing 
low in the centre of the platform with an air of 
great deference and courtesy to his silent and 
spellbound audience. 

He might have astonished more sophisticated 
spectators. Instead of wearing the ordinary even- 
ing dress or the costume of the Japanese or Hindoo, 
according to the usual wont of conjurers, he was 
clad in a blue flannel shirt and a black-and-red 
blazer, and his blue knickerbockers and long blue 
hose on his muscular legs impressed the mountain- 
eers as a ballet costume might have done, could 
they have conceived of such attenuations of attire. 
A russet leather belt was drawn tightly around his 
slender waist, and they gazed at him from the tip 
of his dark sleek red-brown hair, carefully parted 
in the middle, to the toes of his pointed russet 
shoes with an amazement which his best feat might 
fail to elicit. His air of deep respect reassured 
them in a measure, for they could not gauge the 
covert banter in his tone and the mockery in his 
eyes as his sonorous "Ladies and gentlemen" rang 
forth in the little building. And there was some- 
thing more in his eyes — of reddish-brown tint like 
his hair — that the mockery and banter could not 
hide ; for these were transient, and the other — a 
thought with a fang. It might have been anxiety, 
remorse, turmoil of mind, fear, — one might hardly 
say, — plainly to be seen, yet not discerned. Be- 
low his eyes, above his cheek-bones, that showed 



THE JUGGLER. 5 

their contour, for his face was thin, were deep blue 
circles, and that unmistakable look of one who has 
received some serious sudden shock. But the spirit 
of the occasion was paramount now, and he was 
as unconscious of the lack in his accoutrements in 
the estimation of the mountaineers as they were 
of how the bare feet of sundry of his spectators 
offended his prejudices in favor of chaussure. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here 
to witness some of those feats which are variously 
ascribed to charlatanry, to skill or sleight of hand, 
or to certain traffic with supernatural agencies. 
Those which I shall have the honor to exhibit to 
this select audience I shall not explain; in fact," 
with a twinkle of the eye, "some of them are inex- 
plicable, and so may they long continue ! I have 
not thought best to avail myself of the services of 
an assistant, who is generally, I grieve to say, 
among most of those of my jsrofession, a mere 
trickster and accomplice, and therefore you will 
have the evidence of your eyes to the fact that 
every feat which I perform this evening is abso- 
lutely genuine." 

His spirit of rodomontade had reached its limit. 
Perhaps some of the more finely strung sensibili- 
ties in the audience appraised the ridicule in his 
intention, despite the masquerade of his manner, 
for a glance of resentment kindled here and there ; 
but before the awed and open-mouthed majority 
had drawn a breath or relaxed a muscle he changed 
his tone. 



6 THE JUGGLER. 

"I have selected a young man from amongst 
you," he said, quite naturally and pleasantly, "to 
aid me in finding properties, as it were, for my 
entertainment ; for in apology be it spoken, I am 
not prepared in any respect for an exhibition of 
this sort. He has, at my request, borrowed for 
me this bayonet." He took from the table drawer 
the weapon, newly cleaned and glistening, and 
looked at it narrowly as he stood before them on 
the platform, "I should say it has seen service. 
Can this gentleman tell me whether it is from a 
Federal or a Confederate gun?" 

He stepped down suddenly from the platform 
and handed the bayonet to a strong-featured, 
stern-looking old mountaineer who had earlier re- 
garded him with dawning disfavor. 

"It's from a Rebel weepon," the veteran said 
succinctly. 

"It's off a Yankee Springfiel'," a voice came 
from the other side of the room. 

"Enfiel'," said the first speaker doggedly. 

"Springfiel'," contradicted his invisible antago- 
nist tersely. 

Once more, "Enfiel'." 

And again out of the shadow, "Spring-fiel'." 

And the juggler became aware that he had 
waked up the political dog of the region. 

"They are equally digestible," he declared, re- 
suming his place on the platform. "I believe I '11 
swallow it." And so he did. 

For one moment there was an intense silence. 



THE JUGGLER. 7 

while the petrified audience gazed in motionless 
astonishment at the juggier. Then arose a great 
tnmult of voices ; there was a violent movement at 
the rear of the room; a bench broke down, and in 
the midst of the commotion, with a gay cry of 
"Hey! Presto!" the juggler apparently drew the 
bayonet from out his throat and triumphantly held 
it up before the people. 

An increasing confusion of sounds greeted him. 
Screams of delighted mirth came from the younger 
portion of the audience, and exclamations hardly 
less flattering from the laughing elders. But ever 
above the babel terrified shrieks, shrill and clam- 
orous, rose higher and higher, and the juggler 
frowned with sudden sharp annoyance when he 
distinguished the fact that an elderly woman was 
crying out that these were the works of the devil, — 
that here was Satan, and that she would not bide 
easy till he was bound, neck and heels together, 
'^nd cast forth into the river. He was not usually 
devoid of humane sentiments, but he felt vastly re- 
lieved when she fell into strong hysterics, and was 
carried, still shrieking, out to the ox-cart, whence, 
despite the closed doors and windows, over and 
over again those weird, unearthly cries were borne 
in to the audience, as the yoking of the steers for 
the homeward journey was in progress. 

The juggler was out of countenance. "Ladies 
and gentlemen," he said, with indignation coloring 
his face to the roots of his hair, "these things are 
done for amusement. If tliey fail to amuse, they 



8 THE JUGGLER. 

fail altogether. I will go on, or, if you desire, 
your money will be refunded at the door." 

"Lawd, naw, bub!" exclaimed a toothless old 
fellow, bent nearly double as he sat on a front 
bench, his clasped hands between his knees. " We- 
uns want ter view all ye know how ter do, — all 
ye know how ter do, son." 

Here and there reassuring voices confirmed the 
spokesman, and as the discomfited juggler turned 
to the table drawer, resolving on something less 
bloody-minded, he heard a vague titter from that 
portion of the building in which, being young, he 
had already observed that the greater number of 
personable maidens were seated. 

None so dread ridicule as the satirist. He 
whirled around, his heart swelling indignantly, his 
eyes flashing fire, to perceive, advancing down the 
aisle, a fat woman in a gigantic sunbonnet, which, 
however, hardly obscured her broad, creased, dim- 
pled face, a brown calico dress wherein the waist- 
line must ever be a matter of conjecture, and a 
little shoulder-shawl of bright red - and - yellow 
plaid. She slowly approached him with something 
of steel glittering in her hands, and at his amazed 
and dumfounded expression of countenance the 
girlish cachinnation which he so resented broke 
forth afresh. 

"Beg pardon?" he said more than once, as 
from his elevation he sought to catch her request. 
A single tooth of the upper register, so to sjjeak, 
however ornamental, did not serve to render more 



THE JUGGLER. 9 

distinct the fat woman's wheeze, in which she 
soiisrht to articulate her desire that he should forth- 
with swallow her big shears, so fascinated was she 
by the evidence he had given of his proficiency in 
the arts of the impossible. 

" Certainly, with pleasure, — always anxious to 
oblige the ladies," he protested, with a return of 
his covert mockery, as he bowed after a dancing- 
class fashion, and received from her fat creased 
hands the great domestic implement with its dan- 
gling steel chain. "Ladies and gentlemen," he 
declared, with his hand upon his heart, as she sub- 
sided, shaking with laughter, on the front bench, 
"I cannot refrain from expressing my flattered 
sense of this mark of the confidence reposed in me 
by this distinguished audience, as well as by the 
estimable lady who is so willing to offer her shears 
on the altar of science. She is not satisfied with 
the warlike bayonet. She desires to see the same 
experiment, mutatis mutandis, on a pair of shears, 
which are devoted to the tender-hearted and affable 
uses of the work-basket, filled with the love of 
home and gentle fireside associations, and — and 
— and other domestic scraps. The rivet is a trifle 
loose, and I hope I may not be forced to disgorge 
the blades separately." 

He was holding up the scissors as he spoke these 
words, so that all could see them; the next mo- 
ment they had disappeared down his throat, as it 
were, and the astounded audience sat as if resolved 
into eyes, staring spellbound. 



10 THE JUGGLER. 

When, a few minutes later, with his cabalistic 
phrase, "Hey ! Presto ! " he drew from his open red 
mouth the shears dangling at the end of the rattling 
steel chain, which the audience had just seen him 
swallow, the clamor of exclamations again arose, 
for the accepted methods of applause had not yet 
penetrated to the seclusions of Etowah Cove; but 
there was in this manifestation of surprise so defi- 
nite a quaver of fear that certain lines of irritation 
and anxiety corrugated the smooth brow of the 
young prestidigitator. The tumultuous amazement 
of the spectators seemed as if it were too great to 
be realized all at once, and with the sight of the 
performance anew of the impossible feat, which 
should have served as reassurance, it degenerated 
into downright ten-or which held the possibilities 
of panic. The idea of panic suggested other pos- 
sibilities. Albeit their unsophisticated state was 
highly favorable to the development of emotions of 
boundless astonishment and absolute credulity, he 
realized that it was not unattended by some per- 
sonal danger. After the suggestion of being bound 
hand and foot and thrown into the river, the jug- 
gler was more than once unpleasantly reminded — 
for he was a man of some reading — of certain fel- 
low craftsmen in the mists of centuries agone, 
whose wondrous skill in the powers of air, earth, 
and fire, though great enough to be deemed unlaw- 
ful traffic with the devil, could not avail to prevent 
their own earthly elements from going up in smoke 
and flame, and thus contributing ethereally to the 



THE JUGGLER. 11 

great reserves of material nature. He was here 
alone, far from help, among the most ignorant and 
lawless people he had ever seen ; and if their dislo- 
cated ideas of necromancy and unlawful dealing 
with the devil should take a definite hold upon 
them, he inight be summarily dealt with as an act 
of religion, and the world none the wiser. Such 
disaster had befallen better jugglers, sooth to say, 
in more civilized communities than Etowah Cove. 
He sought to put this thought from him, for his 
heart was sufficiently stout of fibre, but determined 
that he would not again be diverted from his inten- 
tion of substituting less blood-curdling feats for 
the usual experiments with, knives and swords. 
He preserved a calm face and debonair manner, as 
he carefully wiped the shears free from suppositi- 
tious moisture on a folded white table-cloth that 
lay on the platform, and stepped down, and with 
an elaborate bow presented them to their chuckling 
and gratified owner. 

"Jane Ann Sims wouldn't keer if the Old Nick 
hisself war ter set up his staff in the Cove, ef he 
lied some news ter tell or a joke ter crack, or some 
sorter gamesome new goin's-on that she hed never 
hearn tell on afore," whispered a lean, towering, 
limp sunbonnet to its starch and squatty neighbor. 

"An' she hard on ter fifty odd years old! " said 
the squatty sunbonnet, malignantly accurate. 

As the juggler stepped back to the platform he 
took up the table-cloth and shook it out, that they 
might all be assured that there was nothing con- 
cealed in its folds. 



12 THE JUGGLER. 

"Now, ladies and gentlemen," he said, taking 
heart of grace and his former manner of covert 
half -banter and mock politeness together, "we all 
know that it is by the action of the sun on the soil, 
and the dew and the rain, that the seeds of plants 
germinate and the green herb grows for the service 
of men. I propose to show you now a small agri- 
cultural experiment which I venture to hope will 
be of special interest to this assembly, as most of 
you are engaged in the noble pursuit of tilling the 
soil, when other diversions cannot by any means 
be had." 

As he clattered off his sentences, garnished now 
and then with trite bits of Latin, the solemn, 
stolid, uncomprehending faces ministered to a cer- 
tain mocking humor which he had, and which was 
now becoming a trifle bitter with the reluctant 
realization of a lurking danger. 

"Will some gentleman come forward and tell 
me what kind of a seed this is?" 

He held the small object up between his finger 
and thumb for a moment, but no one approached. 
He perceived in a sort of helpless dismay that the 
dread of him was growing. He was fain to step 
down from the platform and hand the seed to the 
old man on the front bench, whose bleared eyes 
were glittering with delight in the greatest sensa- 
tion that had ever fallen to his lot; for the juggler 
judged that of all the audience he was nearest the 
masculine counterpart of the progressive Jane Ann 
Sims. The old man, in his circle, was not a per- 



THE JUGGLER. 13 

son of consideration nor accustomed to deference. 
He was all the more easily flattered to be thus 
singled out by the juggler, the conspicvious cyno- 
sure of all eyes, to give his judgment and pro- 
nounce upon the identity of the seed. The love 
of notoriety is a blasting passion, deadening all 
considerations of the conformable. Even in these 
secluded wilds, even in the presence of but a hand- 
ful of his familiars, even in the lowly estate of a 
cumberer of the ground, lagging superfluous, it 
smote Josiah Cobbs. He rose to his feet, whirled 
briskly around, and, with a manner founded on 
the sprightly style of the juggler, yet compounded 
with the diction of the circuit rider, exclaimed, 
"Yea, my brethren, this hyar be a seed, — yea, it 
be actially a persimmon seed, though so dry I 
ain't so sure whether or not it '11 ever sot off ter 
grow like a fraish one might. Yea, my brethren, 
I ain't sure how long — ah — this hyar persimmon 
seed he V — ah — been kem out o' the persimmon. 
Yea" — 

He progressed not beyond this point, for the 
audience had no mind to be entertained with the 
rhetoric of old Josiah Cobbs, resenting his usurpa- 
tion of so prominent a position, and his presump- 
tion in undertaking to address the meeting. Cer- 
tain people in this world are given to understand 
that although their estate in life be not inferior 
to that of their neighbors, humility becomes them, 
and a low seat is their appropriate station. More 
than one sunbonnet had rustlingly communed with 



14 THE JUGGLER. 

another as to the fact that Josiah Cobbs would 
hardly be heard at an experience meeting, the 
state of his humble soul not interesting the com- 
munity. So simultaneous a storm of giggles swept 
the cluster of girls as to demonstrate that their 
gravity was of the same tenuous quality as that of 
their ag^e and sex elsewhere. It was wonderful 
that they did not sustain some collapse, and this 
furnishes a pleasing commentary upon the strength 
of the youthful diaphragm. The men exchanged 
glances of grim derision, and finally one, with 
the air of a person not to be trifled with, rose up 
and stretched out his hand for the bewitched seed, 
forgetting for the moment all his quondam qualms 
of distrust. 

Josiah Cobbs rendered it up without an instant's 
hesitation. Precious as was the opportunity in his 
eyes, preempted by his own courage, his was not 
the type which makes resistance. The hand to 
despoil him had hardly need to be strong. The 
will to have what he possessed was sufficient for 
his pillage. He hardly claimed the merits apper- 
taining to the pioneer. He stood meekly by as 
the seed was passed from one set of horny finger- 
tips to another, and the dictum, "It's a persim- 
mon seed, stranger," was repeated with a decision 
which implied no previous examination. 

"A persimmon seed, is it?" said the juggler 
airily, receiving it back. "Now, gentlemen, you 
see that there is nothing in this pail of earth but 
good pulverized soil." He passed his fingers 



THE JUGGLER. 15 

through the surface, shaking them daintily free 
from the particles afterward, while the hands of 
the practical farmers went boldly grappling down 
to the bottom with no thought of dirt. "You see 
me plant this persimmon seed. There! Now I 
throw over the pail this empty cloth, — let it stand 
up in a peak so as to give the seed air; now I 
place the whole on the table, where you can all 
see it and assure yourselves that no one goes near 
it. While awaiting developments I shall try to 
entertain you by singing a song. It may be un- 
known to you — yet why this suggestion in the 
presence of so much culture ? — that in the days of 
eld certain wandering troubadours came to be in 
some sort men of my profession. In the intervals 
of minstrelsy they entertained and astonished their 
audiences with feats of the miraculous, — strange 
exploits of legerdemain and such light pastimes, 
— and were therefore termed jongleurs. I shall 
seek to follow my distinguished Provencal prede- 
cessors in the gay science hand i^cissibus cequis, 
and pipe up as best I may." 

There was a pause while the juggler, standing 
at one end of the platform, seemed to run over in 
his mind the treasures of his repertoire. The mel- 
low lamplight shone in his reflective brown eyes, 
cast down as he twisted one end of the long red- 
brown mustache, and again thrown up as if he 
sought some recollection among the old rafters. 
These had the rich reserves of color characteristic 
of old wood, and the heavy beams of oak showed 



16 THE JUGGLER. 

all their veinous possibilities in yellow and brown 
fibrous eomminglements against the deep umber 
shadows of the high peak of the roof. The cob- 
webs adhering here and there had almost the con- 
sistency of a fabric, so densely woven they were. 
One pendulous gauze fragment moved suddenly 
without a breath of air, for a light living creature 
had run along the beam beneath it, and now stood 
looking down at the audience with a glittering eye 
and a half-spread bat-like wing, — a flying squir- 
rel, whose nest was secreted in the king-post and 
entered from the outside. So still was the au- 
dience, — the grizzled, unkempt men, the sunbon- 
neted women, even the giggling girls in the cor- 
ner, — he might have been meditating a downward 
plunge into the room. 

Then slightly frowning, but smiling too, the 
juggler began to sing. 

It was a cultivated voice that rang out in the 
measures of "My Pretty Jane," — a tenor of good 
range, true, clear, sweet, with a certain romantic 
quality that was in some sort compelling and effec- 
tive. He sang well. Not that the performance 
would have been acceptable considered as that of 
a high-grade professional, yet it was far too good 
for a mere parlor amateur. The rich, vibrant 
voice, without accompaniment, — grotesque inade- 
quacy to his mind, — filled the little building with 
a pathetic, penetrating sweetness, and the whole 
method of rendering the ballad was characterized 
by that elaborate simplicity and restrained preci- 



THE JUGGLER. 17 

sion SO marked in professional circles, so different 
from the enthusiastic abandon of the reckless 
home talent. 

It fell flat in Etowah Cove. There were people 
in the audience who, if they could not sing, were 
intimately persuaded that they could; and after 
all, that is the essential element of satisfaction. 
The modulation, the delicate shades of expression, 
the refinement of style, were all lost on the major- 
ity; only here and there a discerning ear was 
pricked up, appreciating in the concord of sweet 
sounds something out of the common. But there 
was no sign of approval, and in the dead silence 
which succeeded the final roulade, coming so trip- 
pingly off, the juggler showed certain symptoms 
of embarrassment and discomfiture. One might 
easily perceive from the deft assurance of his ex- 
ploits of sleight of hand that the value he placed 
upon them was far cheaper than his estimate of 
his singing. It was a susceptible sort of vanity that 
could be hurt by the withheld plaudits of Etowah 
Cove; but vanity is a sensitive plant, and requires 
tender nurture. He stood silent and flushing for 
a moment, while still a gentle fibrous resonance 
seemed to pervade the room, — the memory of the 
song rather than its echo; then, with a sudden 
flouting airy whirl, he turned on his heel, and 
caught oft" the cloth that had enveloped the pail of 
earth containing the persimmon seed which he had 
just planted. And lo! glossy and green and lus- 
trous in the light, there stood a fair young shoot. 



18 THE JUGGLER. 

some two feet in height, and with all its leaves 
a-rustle. It was a good trick and very cleverly 
done. 

The little building once more was a babel of 
sounds. The flying squirrel scrambled back to 
the king-post, pausing once to look down in half- 
frightened amazement. The window - panes re- 
flected a kaleidoscope of bright bits of color swiftly 
swaying, for the audience was in a turmoil. It 
was not, however, the artistic excellence of the 
feat which swayed the s^^ectators, but its agricul- 
airal significance. This, the old farmers realized, 
was indeed necromancy. Their struggles with the 
tough and reluctant earth, which so grudgingly 
responds to toil, oft with such hard-exacted usury, 
taking so much more than it gives, and which only 
the poet or the weed-loving botanist calls generous 
and fruitful, had served to teach them that this 
kind of growth must needs come only through the 
wiles of the deluding devil. Not even an agricul- 
tural paper — had they known of such a sophisti- 
cation — could countenance such deceits. A grim, 
ashen-tinted face with gray hair appeared near the 
back of the building; a light gray homespun coat 
accentuated its pallor. A long finger was warn- 
ingly shaken at the juggler, as he stood, trium- 
phant, flushed, beside the flourishing shoot he had 
evoked from the persimmon seed, but only half 
smiling, for something sinister in the commingled 
voices had again smitten his attention. Then he 
was arraigned by Parson Greenought with the 



THE JUGGLER. 19 

solemn adjuration in a loud tone, "Pause, Mr. 
Showman, pause!" 

The juggler was already petrified. The spec- 
tators obeyed the earnest command, albeit not in- 
tended for them. They fell once more into their 
places; the heads of many turned now toward the 
juggler, and again back to the preacher, who, in 
his simplicity, had no idea that he had transgressed 
the canons of sanctification in visiting a place of 
worldly amusement, since indeed this was his first 
opportunity, and greatly had he profited by it, 
until this last enormity had aroused his clerical 
conscience. "Mr. Showman," he demanded, "do 
you-uns call this religion? " 

"Religion!" said Mr. Showman, with a burst 
of unregenerate laughter, for the limits of his pa- 
tience had been nearly reached. "I call it fun." 

"I call it the devices of the devil! " thundered 
the preacher. "An' hyar ye be," — he turned on 
the audience, ^ — "ye perfessin' members, a-aggin' 
this man on in his conjurin' an' witchments an' 
Satan tricks, till fust thing ye know the Enemy 
will appear, horns, hoofs, an' tail, a-spittin' fire 
an' " — the juggler had a passing recollection that 
he too could spit fire, and had intended to make 
his conge amongst pyrotechnics of this sort, and 
he welcomed the thought of caution that was not, 
like most of its kind, ex post facto, — "a-spittin' 
fire, an' a-takin' yer souls down ter hell with him. 
Hyar ye be " — 

"If you will allow me to interrupt you, sir,'' 



20 THE JUGGLER. 

the juggler said persuasively, "you are altogether 
mistaken, and I should like to make a full expla- 
nation to a man o£ your age and experience." His 
eyes were grave ; his face had grown a trifle pale. 
The danger had come very near. Rough handling 
might well be encountered amongst these primitive 
wights, inflamed by pulpit oratory and religious 
excitement, and abetted by their pastoral guide. 
"In two minutes," he went on, "I can teach you 
to perform this simple feat which seems to you 
impossible to human agency. It is nothing but 
sleight of hand, a sort of knack." 

For one moment Parson Greenought hesitated, 
beguiled. His eye kindled with curiosity and 
eagerness ; he made as though he would leave the 
bench whereon he was ensconced, to approach the 
alluring juggler. Unfortunately, it v^as at the mo- 
ment that the young man's hands, grasping the 
persimmon shoot near the base, drew it forth from 
the earth with a wrench, so firmly was it planted, 
and showed to the discerning bucolic gaze the fully 
developed root with the earth adhering to its fibres ; 
thus proving by the eyesight of the audience, be- 
yond all power of gainsaying, that it had sprouted 
from the seed and grown two feet high while this 
juggler — this limb of Satan — had sung his little 
song about his Pretty Jane. 

A man rarely has to contend with an excess 
of faith in him and his deeds. The juggler was 
fiercely advised by a dark-browed man leaning 
forward across one of the benches, with a menacing 



THE JUGGLER. 21 

duplication of his figure and the gesture of his 
clenched fist reflected in the window, not to try to 
slip out of it. 

And Parson Greenought, with a swelling redun- 
dancy of voice and a great access of virtue, gave 
forth expression of his desire to abide by the will 
that had ordained the growth of every herb whose 
seed is in itself upon the earth; he would not 
meddle and he would not mar, nor would he learn 
with unhallowed and wicked curiosity thus to per- 
vert the laws that had been laid down while the 
earth was yet void and without form. 

"Well, it never yet was ordained that this per- 
simmon seed was to grow," said the juggler, still 
game, though with a fluctuating color. He fished 
the stone out from the earth, and, dusting it off 
with his fine white handkerchief, put it between 
his strong molar teeth and cracked it. He would 
not again invite attention to the reluctance of the 
audience to approach him, so he laid it down on 
the edge of the front bench with the remark, 
"You can see for yourselves the kernel is with- 
ered; that thing has no capacities for growth." 

One or two looked cautiously at the withered 
kernel within the riven pit, and then glanced sig- 
nificantly at each other. It was shrunken, old, 
worthless, as he had said, but then his black art 
was doubtless sufficient to have withered it with 
the mere wish. 

"I don't know a persimmon sprout from a dog- 
wood, or a sumach, or anything else," declared the 



22 THE JUGGLER. 

juggler. His face was hard and dogged; he was 
compelled in his own behoof to unmask himself 
and show how very superficial were his cleverest 
efforts. He did it as ungraciously as he might. 
"This young man" — he indicated a bold bluff 
young mountaineer who was availing himself of 
the "standing-room only," to which a number of 
the youths were relegated — "dug up this sprout 
at my request this afternoon, and hunted out a 
last year's seed among the dead leaves on the 
ground." 

As his eyes met those of this young fellow the 
twinkle of mischievous delight in the mountaineer's 
big blue orbs gave him a faint zest of returning 
relish for the situation, albeit the primitive denizens 
of the Cove had been all too well humbugged even 
for his own comfort. 

"This pocket is torn," — he thrust his hand into 
it, — " and has no bottom. I therefore slipped 
this wand into this pocket of these knickerbock- 
ers," suiting the action to the word. "You see 
the leaves all fold together, so that its presence 
does not even mar the pronounced symmetry of 
my garments. Then I placed the seed, thus, and 
threw the cloth over the pail, thus ; with my left 
hand I slipped out the persimmon shoot, and 
planted it, thus ; and it was beneath the cloth that 
I left in a peak to give it air and to conceal it 
while I had the honor to entertain you by singing." 

He supposed that he would have satisfied even 
the most timorous and doubtful by this revelation 



THE JUGGLER. 23 

of his methods and of the innocuous nature of his 
craft, but he could not fail to note the significantly 
shaken heads, the disaffected whispers, the collogu- 
ing of the young mountaineers occupying "stand- 
ing-i'oom only." 

"Ef he hed done it that-a-way at fust, I 'd hev 
viewed it sure. I viewed it plain this time," said 
one of these. 

"He can't fool me," protested a sour-visaged 
woman who kept up a keen espionage on all the 
world within the range of her pink sunbonnet. 

"One lie never mended another," said the old 
preacher aside in a low voice to a presiding elder. 
"Potsherds, lies are, my brother; they hold no 
water." 

The juggler could deceive them easily enough, 
but alack, he could not undeceive them! He de- 
bated within himself the possibility which each of 
his feats possessed of exciting their ire, as he hur- 
riedly rummaged in the drawer of the table. He 
closed it abruptly. 

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "behold this 
paper of needles; and here also I desire to intro- 
duce to your notice this small spool of thread — 
Has any lady here," he continued, with the air of 
breaking off with a sudden thought, " any breadths 
of calico or other fabric which she might desire to 
have run up or galloped up? I am a great seam- 
ster." 

Of course, although some had brought their 
babies, and one or two their lunch to stop the 



24 THE JUGGLER. 

mouths of the older children, many their snuff or 
their tobacco, no one had brought work on this 
memorable outing to the show in the Cove. 

"What a pity!" he cried. "Well, I can only 
show you how I thread needles. I swallow them 
all, thus," and down they went. "Then I swal- 
low the thread," and forthwith the spool disap- 
peared down his throat. 

The audience, educated by this time to expect 
marvels, sat staring, stony and still. There was 
a longer interval than usual as he stood with one 
hand on the table, half smiling, half expectant, 
as if he too were doubtful of the result. Sud- 
denly he lifted his hand, and began to draw one 
end of the thread from his lips. On it came, 
longer and longer; and here and there, threaded 
and swaying on the fine filament, were the needles, 
of assorted sizes, beginning with the delicate and 
small implement, increasing grade by grade, till 
the descending scale commenced, and the needles 
dwindled as they appeared. 

Parson Greenought had risen when the thread 
was swallowed, but he lingered till the last cam- 
bric needle was laid on the table, and the presti- 
digitator had made his low bow of self -flattery and 
triumph in conclusion. Then having witnessed it 
all, his forefinger shaking in the air, he cried out : 
"I leave this place! I pernounce these acts ter be 
traffickin' with the devil an' sech. Ef I be wrong, 
the Lord will jedge me 'cordin' ; ez he hev gin 
me gifts I see with my eyes, an' my eyes air true, 



THE JUGGLER. 25 

an' they wai* in wisdom made, an' war made ter 
see with. Oh, young man, pause in time! Sin 
hev marked ye! Temptation beguiles ye! I 
dunno what ye hev in mind, but beware of it! 
Beware of the sin that changes its face, an' shifts 
its name, an' juggles with the thing ez is not what 
it seems ter be. Beware! beware! " 

As he stalked out, the juggler sought to laugh, 
but he winced visibly. The spectators were on 
their feet now, having risen with the excitement 
of the moment of the old man's exit. There was, 
however, a manifest disposition to linger; for hav- 
ing become somewhat acclimated to miracles, their 
appetite for the wonder-working was whetted. 
But the juggler, frowning heavily, had turned 
around, and was shaking the cloth out, and bang- 
ing about in the drawer of the table, as if making 
his preparations for departure. The people be- 
gan to move slowly to the door. It was not his 
intention to dismiss the audience thus summarily 
and unceremoniouslj'", and as the situation struck 
his attention he advanced toward the front of the 
platform. 

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began; but his 
voice was lost in the clatter of heavy boots on the 
floor, the scraping of benches moved from their 
proper places to liberate groups in order to precede 
their turn in the procession, the sudden sleepy pro- 
test of a half-awakened infant, rising in a sharp 
crescendo and climaxing in a hearty bawl of un- 
bridled rage. 



26 THE JUGGLER. 

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he cried vainly to 
tlie dusty atmosphere, and the haggard, disheveled 
aspect of the half -deserted room. "Oh, go along, 
then," he added, dropping his voice, "and the 
devil take you! " 

His mountain acqviaintance had come to the side 
of the platform, and stood waiting, one hand on the 
table, while he idly eyed the juggler, who had 
returned to rummaging the drawer. He was a 
tall strong young fellow, with straight black hair 
that grew on his forehead in the manner denomi- 
nated a "cowlick," and large contemplative blue 
eyes ; his face showed some humor, for the lines 
broke readily into laughter. His long boots were 
drawn high over his brown jeans trousers, and his 
blue-checked homespun shirt was open at the neck, 
and showed his strong throat that held his head 
very sturdily and straight. 

He was compassionate at the moment. "Plumb 
beat out, ain't ye? " he said sympathetically. 

"I'm half dead!" cried the juggler furiously, 
throwing off his blazer, and wiping his hot face 
with his handkerchief. 

The open door admitted the currents of the chill 
night air and the pungent odors of the dense dark 
woods without. Calls to the oxen in the process 
of gearing up sounded now and again droningly. 
Occasionally quick hoof beats told of a horseman's 
departure at full gallop. The talk of waiting 
groups outside now came mingled to the ear, then 
ceased and I'ose anew. More than once a loud 



THE JUGGLER. 27 

yawn told of the physical stress of the late hour 
and the unwonted excitement. The young moun- 
taineer was going the rounds of the room extin- 
guishing the tallow dips laboriously; taking each 
down, blowing gustily at it, and replacing it in 
the sconce. The juggler, as he passed, with his 
blazer over his arm, quenched the lights far more 
expeditiously, but mechanically, as it seemed, by 
fanning the timorous flames out seriatim with his 
hat in quick, decisive gestures. When he stood 
in the door, the room dark behind him, there was 
no life, no motion, in the umbrageous obscurity 
at hand; naught gave token of the audience so 
lately assembled save the creak of an unoiled axle 
far away, and once the raucous cry of a man to 
his team. Then all was still. In the hush, a 
vague drowsy note came suddenly from a bird high 
amongst the budding leaves of a tulip-tree hard 
by. An interval, and a like dreamy response 
sounded from far down the slope where pendulous 
boughs overhung the river. Some sweet chord of 
sympathy had brought the thought of the one to 
the other in the deep dark night, — these beings so 
insignificant in the plan of creation, — and one 
must needs rouse itself with that veiled reedy 
query, and the other, downily dreaming, must pipe 
out a reassuring "All 's well." 

The suggestiveness of this lyric of two tones 
was not lost on the juggler. He was pierced by 
the poignancy of exile. He could hardly realize 
that he was of the same species as the beings who 



28 THE JUGGLER. 

had formed the "cultivated and intellectual audi- 
ence " he had had the honor to entertain. Not 
one process of his mind could be divined by them ; 
not one throb of their superstitious terrors could 
he share. 

"The cursed fatality," he growled between his 
teeth, "that brought me to this God-forsaken 
country! " 

"Waal," drawled the young mountaineer, whom 
he had forgotten for the moment, "they won't be 
so tur'ble easy skeered nex' time." 

"They won't have another chance in a hurry," 
retorted the juggler angrily, as they walked away 
together in single file. 

The night was very dark, although the great 
whorls of constellations were splendidly abloom in 
the clear sky. If a ray let fell to earth in the 
forest, it was not appreciable in the sombre depths, 
and the juggler, with all his craft, might hardly 
have made shift to follow his companion but for 
the spark and the light luminous smoke of the 
mountaineer's pipe. Suddenly, as they turned a 
sharp edge of a series of great rocks, that like 
flying buttresses projected out Ih-om the steep per- 
pendicular wall of a crag above them, all at once 
growing visible, a white flare shone before their 
eyes, illumining all the surrounding woods. There 
in an open space near the edge of a bluff was 
a great fire of logs burning like a funeral pyre. 
The juggler had paused as if spellbound. From 
the opposite side of the glowing mass a face, dfs- 



THE JUGGLER. 29 

torted, tremulous, impossibly hideous, elongated 
almost out of the proportion of humanity, peered 
at him. 

"For God's sake, what's that?" he cried out, 
clutching at his guide's arm. 

The slow mountaineer, surprised out of his com- 
posure, paused, and took his pipe from his mouth 
to stare uncomprehendingly at his companion. 

"Jes' burnin' lime," he said. 

Their shadows, suddenly evolved, stretched over 
the ground in the white flare. The Cove, not far 
beneath, for this was on a low spur of the great 
range, now flickered into full view, now receded 
into the darkness. Above the vague mountain 
the stars seemed all gone, and the sky was elusive 
and cloaked. For all the art of the juggler, he 
could show naught of magic more unnatural, more 
ghastly, than the face of the lime-burner as it ap- 
peared through the medium of the heated air aris- 
ing from the primitive kiln, — protean, distorted 
by every current of the night's breath, — although 
it was of much significance to him, and later he 
came to know it well to his cost. As the man 
caught the sound of their approach, he walked 
around to the side of the kiln, and his face and 
figure, no longer seen through the unequally re- 
fracting medium of the heated air, dwindled to 
normal proportions. It was not a prepossessing 
face in its best estate, — long, thin-lipped, grim, 
with small eyes set close together, and surmounted 
by a wide wool hat, which, being large for his 



30 THE JUGGLER. 

head, was so crushed together that its crown rose 
up in a peak. His clothes were plentifully dusted 
with powdery flakes, and the scalding breath of 
the unslaked lime was perceptible to the throats 
of the newcomers. 

"Ye 'pear ter be powerful late," the young 
mountaineer hazarded. 

"Weather signs air p'intin' fur rain," replied 
the lime-burner. "I ain't wantin' all this lime 
ter git slacked by accident." He glanced down 
with a workman's satisfaction at the primitive 
process. Between the logs of the great pile layers 
of the broken limestone were interposed, and were 
gradually calcined as the fire blazed. Although 
some of it was imperfectly consumed, and here 
and there lay in half -crude lumps, the quantity 
well burned was sufficient to warrant the laborer's 
anxiety to get it under shelter before it should 
sustain the deteriorating effects of moisture. 

"Gideon Beck war a-promisin' ter kem back 
straight arter supper," said Peter Knowles, "an' 
holp me git it inter the rock house thar." He in- 
dicated a grotto in the face of the cliff, where, by 
the light of the fire, one might perceive that lime 
had already been stored. The beetling rocks 
above it afforded adequate protection from falling 
weather, and the small quantity of the commodity 
was evidently disproportionate to the ample spaces 
for its accommodation within. "I felt plumb 
beset an' oneasy 'bout Gid," added Knowles. 
"He mought hev hed a fit, or suthin' may have 



THE JUGGLER. 31 

happeiiied down ter his house, ter some o' the 
chil'ii o' suthin'. He merried my sister Judy, ye 
know. They don't take haffen keer o' them 
chil'n; some o' them mought hev got sot afire o' 
suthin', or" — 

"They mought^ but they ain't," exclaimed Jack 
Ormsby, the young mountaineer, with a laugh. 
"Gid 's been down yander ter the show, an' all the 
chil'n, an' yer sister Judy too." 

"What show?" demanded Knowles shortly, his 
grim face half angry, half amazed. 

"The show in the schoolhouse in the Cove. 
This hyar stranger-man, he gin a show," Ormsby 
explained. "I viewed 'em all thar, all the fam- 
bly." 

There was a momentary pause, and one might 
hear the wind astir in the darkness of the woods 
below, and feel the dank breath of the clouds that 
invisibly were gathering on the brink of the range 
above. One of the sudden mountain rains was at 
hand. 

"An' I wish I hed every one of 'em hyar 
now!" exclaimed Peter Knowles in fury. "I'd 
kiver 'em all up in that thar quicklime, — that 's 
what I 'd do! An' thar wouldn't be hide, hawns, 
or taller lef of none of 'em in the mornin'. 
Leave me hyar, — leave me hyar with all this 
medjure o' lime, an' I never see none so stubborn 
in burnin', the timber bein' so durned green an' 
sappy, the dad-burned critter promisin' an' pro- 
misin' ter kem back arter he got his supper, — an' 



32 THE JUGGLER. 

go ter a show, a damned show! What sort'n 
show war it?" 

The juggler burst out laughing. " Come ahead ! " 
he cried to Ormsby. "Lend a hand here! " 

He had a strong sense of commercial values. 
To let a marketable commodity lie out and be 
ruined by the rain was repellent to all his convic- 
tions of economics. It might have been as much 
for the sake of the lime itself as from a sort of 
half -pity for the deserted lime-burner — for Peter 
Knowles had not the cast of countenance or of 
soul that preempted a fellow feeling — that he 
caught up a great shovel that lay at hand. 

"I'll undertake to learn the ropes in a trice," 
he declared, throwing his coat on the ground. 

Knowles only stared at him in surly amazement, 
but Ormsby, who had often seen the process, threw 
aside the half -burnt-out logs and followed the lead 
of the juggler, who, tense, light, active, the white 
flare, terrible so close at hand, on his face and 
figure, began to shovel the lumps into the barrow 
or cart made to receive the lime. Then, as the 
wind swept by with a warning note, Knowles too 
fell to work, and added the capacities of his expe- 
rience to the sheer iminstructed force of the will- 
ing volunteers. They made it short work. The 
two neophytes found it a scorching experiment, 
and more than once they fell back, flinching from 
the inherent heat of the flying powder as they 
shoveled it into the mouth of the grotto. 

"I had no idea," the juggler said, as he stood 



THE JUGGLER. 66 

by the embers when it was all over, looking from 
one smarting hand to the other, "that quicklime 
is so very powerful, so caustic an agent. I can 
believe you when you say that if you should put a 
body in that bed there it would be consumed by 
morning, — bones and all? " He became sud.denly 
interrogative. 

"Nare toe nor toe-nail lef," returned Peter 
Knowles succinctly, as if he had often performed 
this feat as a scientific experiment. 

The juggler lifted his eyes to the face of the 
man opposite. They dilated and lingered fasci- 
nated with a sort of horror; for that strange ana- 
morphosis had once more possessed it. All at 
variance it was with its natural contours, as the 
heated air streamed up from the bed of half -cal- 
cined stone, — trembling through this shimmering 
medium, yet preserving the semblance of human- 
ity, like the face of some mythical being, demon 
or ghoul. A dawning significance was on his own 
face, of which he was unconscious, but which the 
other noted. How might he utilize this property 
of air and heat and quicklime in some of those 
wonders of jugglery at which he was so expert? 
More than once, as he walked away, he turned back 
to gaze anew at the phenomenon, his trim figure 
lightly poised, his hand in his belt, his blazer 
thrown over his arm, that gleam of discovery on 

his face. 

As the encompassing rocks and foliage at last 

hid him from view, Peter Knowles looked down 

into the fire. 



34 THE JUGGLER. 

"That air a true word. The quicklime would 
eat every bone," he said slowly. "But what air 
he aimin' ter know fur?" And once more he 
looked curiously at the spot where the juggler had 
vanished, remembering the guise of discovery and 
elation his face had worn. 



n. 

Late that night old Tubal Sims lingered on his 
hearthstone, brooding over the embers of, the fail- 
ing fire. As he reviewed the incidents of the even- 
ing, he chuckled with a sort of half -suppressed glee. 
His capacities for enjoyment were not blunted 
by the event itself; the very reminiscence afforded 
him a keen and acute pleasure. In all his sixty 
years he had never known such a vigil as this. 
He could not sleep for the crowding images with 
which his brain teemed. Each detail as it was 
enacted returned to him now with a freshened 
delight. The objections urged by the audience on 
the score of necromancy gave him peculiar joy; 
for he and his wife were of a progressive tendency 
of mind, and had that sly sense of mental supe- 
riority which is one of the pleasantest secrets to 
share with one's own consciousness. As he sat on 
a broken-backed chair, his shoulders bent forward 
and his hands hanging loosely over his knees, the 
hard palms rubbing themselves together from time 
to time, for the air was growing chilly, the light 
of the embers on his shock of grizzled hair, and 
wrinkled face with its long blunt nose and project- 
ing chin, and small deep-set eyes twinkling under 
their overhanging brows, he now and again lifted 



36 THE JUGGLER. 

his head to note any sudden stir about the house. 
So foreign to his habit was this long-lingering 
wakefulness that it told on his nerves in an added 
acuteness of all his senses. He marked the ffnaw- 
ing of a mouse in the roof -room, the sound of the 
rising wind far awa}'^, and the first stir of the elm- 
tree above the clapboards. A cock crew from his 
roost hard by, and then with a yawn Tubal Sims 
pulled off one of his shoes and sat with it in his 
hand, looking at it absently, and laughing at the 
thought of old Parson Greenought and his inter- 
ference to discourage Satan. "I wisht I could 
hev knowed what the boy would hev done nex', 
if so be he hed been lef alone." He made up his 
mind that he would ask the juggler the next day, 
and if possible induce a private repetition of some 
of the wonders for the appreciation of which, evi- 
dently, the public sentiment of Etowah Cove was 
not yet ripe. For the juggler was his guest, hav- 
ing reached his house a few evenings previous 
in the midst of a storm; and asking for shelter 
for the night, the wayfarer had found a hearty 
welcome, and was profiting by it. Sims could 
hear even now the bed-cords creak as he tossed 
in uneasy slumber up in the roof -room, so still the 
house had grown. 

So still that when a deep groan and then an 
agonized gasping sigh came from the sleeper, the 
sounds were so incongruous with the trend of old 
Tubal Sims' s happy reflections that he experienced 
a sudden revulsion of feeling that was like a 



THE JUGGLER. 37 

shock. The rain began to fall on the roof; it 
seemed to come in fine lines on a fluctuating gust, 
for it was as if borne away on the wings of the 
wind, and the eaves vaguely dripped. 

"But oh," cried the sleeper, "the one who lives! 
what can I do ! — for whose life ! his life ! his 
life! " and spoke no more. 

Yet the cabalistic words seemed to ring through 
the house in trumpet tones; they sounded again 
and again in every blast of the wind. The place 
had grown cold ; the fire was dead on the hearth ; 
it was the unfamiliar midnight. Old Tubal Sims 
sat as motionless as if petrified. He had never 
heard of the process of mind-reading, but he would 
fain decipher these sleeping thoughts of his guest. 
He found himself involved in tortuous and futile 
speculations. Who was "the one who lives," 
whose life this stranger grudged? And following 
the antithesis, — not that Tubal Sims would have 
thus phrased it, — was there then one who died ? 
And why should the recollection return in the deep 
slumbers of the night and speak out in this weird 
dreaming voice. 

It occurred to Tubal Sims, for the first time, 
that there was something inexplicable about this 
man. Apparently, he had no mission here save 
for the exhibition of jugglery, — how suddenly it 
had lost its zest ! He knew naught of the people 
or the surrounding region ; he had no baggage, no 
sort of preparation for continued existence, not 
even a change of clothes. Mrs. Sims, being sub- 



38 THE JUGGLER. 

sidized to supply this deficiency, had ah-eady con- 
structed for him one Lkie homespun shirt, which 
evidently astounded him when he first beheld it, 
so different it was from the one he wore, but 
which he accepted meekly enough. Tubal Sims 
told himself that he had been precijntate in hous- 
ing this stranger beyond a shelter during the 
storm. 

To this it had come, — the happy dreaming over 
the fire, renewing a pleasure so rare, — to these 
vague fears and self-reproaches and suspicions and 
anxious speculations. He stumbled to bed at last 
in the dark, yet still the words and the tone 
haunted him. It was long ere he slept, and more 
than once he was roused from shimber to the dark 
silence by the fancy that he heard anew the poign- 
ant iteration. 

If the juggler had dreams, they may have 
weighed heavily upon him the next da}^, for he 
came down the rickety stairs, pale and silent, with 
heavy-lidded eyes and dark blue circles beneath 
them. Under Mrs. Sims's kindly ministrations 
he sought in vain to eat the heavy thick biscuit, 
the underdone fried mush, and the fat greasy 
bacon; for Mrs. Sims was not one of those culi- 
nary geniuses sometimes encountered at humble 
boards ; in good sooth, but for her cows and chick- 
ens, in these early days of his stay in Etowah 
Cove, he would have fared ill indeed. 

"Ye make a better out at swallerin' needles 'n 
ye do swallerin' fried 'taters," she declared, with 



THE JUGGLER. 39 

a reproachful glance, supplemented by her good- 
humored chuckle. 

He could make no sort of compact with the bev- 
erage she called coffee, and after the merest feint 
of breakfast he took his host's angling-tackle and 
wended his way down to the river, observing that 
the fish would bite well to-day, since it was so 
cloudy. Cloudy it was, undoubtedly, sombre and 
drear. Now and then drizzling showers fell, and 
when they ceased the mists that rose in the ravines 
and skulked in every depression were hardly less 
dank and chill. The river, in its deep channel 
between jagged rocky gray bluffs and shelving red 
clay banks of the most brilliant terra-cotta tones, 
was of the color of copper instead of the clear 
steel-gray or the silvered blue it was wont to show, 
so much of the mud of its borders did it hold now 
in solution, brought down by the rains of the night. 
Here and there slender willows hung over it in 
lissome and graceful wont, with such vivid vernal 
suggestions in the tender budding foliage as to 
cause the faint green tint to shine with definite lus- 
tre, like the high lights in some artificial landscape 
of a canvas, amidst the dark dripping bronze-green 
pines of the Cove, which from this jjoint the young 
man could see stretching away in sad-hued verdure 
some three or four miles to the opposite mountain's 
base, — the breadth of the restricted little basin. 
This was the only large outlook at his command ; 
for behind the house he had quitted, the slopes of 
the wooded mountain rose abruptly, steep, rugged. 



40 TEE JUGGLER. 

soon lost among the clouds. He gazed absently 
at the little cabin, the usual structure of two rooms 
with an open passage, as he lay on the shelving 
rock high above the river, the fishing-pole held by 
a heavy boulder fixed on it to secure it in its place, 
his hands clasped under his head, his hat tilted 
somewhat over his eyes; for despite the paucity of 
light in the atmosphere the mists had a certain 
white glaring quality. 

Meanwhile, he was the subject of a degree of 
disaffected scrutiny from indoors. 

"Jane Ann," said Tubal Sims, suddenly inter- 
rupting the loud throaty wheeze by which his help- 
meet beguiled the tedium of washing the dishes, 
and which she construed as that act of devotion 
commonly known as singing a hymn, "that thar 
man ain't got no bait on his hook." 

Jane Ann set the plate in her hand down on the 
table, and turned her broad creased face toward 
her husband as he sat smoking in the passage, just 
outside the door. 

"Then he ain't goin' ter ketch no feesh," she 
replied logically, and lifting both the j)late and 
her droning wheeze she resumed her occupation. 

Tubal Sims, like other men, fluctuated in his 
estimation of his wife's abilities according as they 
seemed to him convertible to his aid. Ordina- 
rily, he was wont to commend Jane Ann Sims's 
logical common sense as "j)owerful smartness," 
and had been known to lean on her judgment 
even in the matter of "craps," in which, if any- 



THE JUGGLER. 41 

where, man is safe from the interference and even 
the ambition of woman. He rejoiced in her free- 
dom from the various notions which appertain to 
her sex, and felt a certain pride that she too had 
withstood the panic which had so preyed upon the 
pleasures of the "show." But now, when her 
lack of the subtler receptivities balked him of a 
possible approach to the key of the mystery which 
he sought to solve, he was irritated because of her 
density of perception, and disposed to underrate 
her capacities to deduce aught from that cabalistic 
phrase which he alone had heard uttered in the 
deej) midnight and from such slender premises 
to frame a just conclusion. And furthermore, 
with the rebuff he realized anew that Jane Ann 
Sims was a woman, incompetent of reason save in 
its most superficial processes, or she would have per- 
ceived that the significance of the unbaited hook lay 
in the strange mental perturbation which could in- 
volve the neglect of so essential a particular, not 
in the obvious fruitlessness of the labor. Jane 
Ann Sims was a woman. Let her wash the dishes. 

"Naw," he said aloud, half scornfully, "he'll 
ketch no feesh." 

Mrs. Sims ceased to wheeze, and her fat face 
relapsed from the pious distortions of her psalmody 
into its normal creases and dimples. "I be plumb 
fit ter fly inter the face o' Providence," she said, 
as she moved heavily about the table and slapped 
down a blue platter but half dried. 

"What fur?" demanded the lord of the house. 



42 THE JUGGLER. 

whose sense of humor was too blunted by his 
speculations, and a haunting anxiety, and a troii- 
blous eagerness to discuss the question of his dis- 
covery, to perceive aught of the ludicrous in the 
lightsome metaphor with which his weighty sjjouse 
had characterized her disaffection with the order- 
ing of events. « 

"Kase Euphemy ain't hyar, o' course. Ye 
'pear ter be sorter dunder-headed this mornin' ! " 
Thus the weaker vessel ! 

She wheezed one more line of her matutinal 
hymn in a dolorous cadence and with breathy in- 
terstices between the Sijondees; then suddenly and 
finally discarding the exercise, she began to speak 
with animation: "I hev always claimed an' sot 
out ter be suthin' of a prophet, — ye yerse'f know 
ez I be more weatherwise 'n common. I be toler'- 
ble skilled in cow diseases, too; an' I kin say 
'forehand who be goin' ter git 'lected ter office, — 
ginerally, though, by knowin' who hev got money 
an' holds his hand slack; an' I kin tell what color 
hair a baby be goin' ter hev whenst he ain't got 
so much ez a furze on the top o' his bald pate; an' 
whenst ye 'low ye air strict sober of a Christmas- 
time or sech, I kin tell ter a — a quart how much 
applejack hev gone down yer gullet; an' " — 

He sacrificed his curiosity as to her other accom- 
plishments as a seer, and hastily inquired, " What 
on the yearth hev sot ye off ter braggin' this-a- 
way, Jane Ann? I never liearn the beat! " 

"I ain't braggin'," expounded Mrs. Sims. "I 



THE .JUGGLER. 43 

be just meditatin' on how forehanded I be in 
viewin' facts ingineral; an' yit," — her voice rose 
in pathetic exasperation, — "the very day o' the 
evenin' this hyar stranger-man got hyar I let 
Euphemy go over ter Piomingo Cove ter visit her 
gi'anny's folks; an' the chile didn't want ter go 
much, — war afeard o' rain, bein' dressed out 
powerful starched ; an' I, so forehanded in sight, 
told her 't warn't goin' ter rain till evenin'." 

"Waal, no more did it. Phemie war under 
shelter six hours 'fore it rained." 

" Lawd-a-massy ! " cried Mrs. Sims, at the end 
of her patience. " What war the use o' creatin' 
man with sech a slow onderstandin' ? I reckon 
the reason woman war made arterward war ter gin 
the critter somebody ter explain things ter him! 
Can't you-uns sense " — she directly addressed her 
husband — "ez what I be a-tryin' ter compass is 
why — why — I could tell ter a minit when the 
storm war a-comin', an' yit couldn't tell the jug- 
gler war comin' with it?" 

Tubal Sims, staring up from under his shaggy 
eyebrows, his arms folded on his knees, his cob 
pipe cocked between his teeth, could only ejacu- 
late, "I dunno." 

"Naw, you-uns dunno," flouted Mrs. Sims, 
"an' you-uns dunno a heap besides that." 

He received this fling in humble silence. Then, 
after the manner of the henpecked, unable to keep 
out of trouble, albeit before his eyes, and flinching 
at the very moment from discipline, he must needs 



44 THE JUGGLER. 

inquire, "Why, Jane Ann, what you-uns want 
the pore child hyar fur? Ye git on toler'ble well 
with the cookin' 'thout her help. Let Phemie 
git her visit out ter her granny in Piomingo 
Cove," he concluded expostulatingly. 

There was not a dimple in Mrs. Sims's face. 
It was all solid, set, stern, fat. She sunk down 
into a chair and folded her arms as she gazed at 
him. "Tubal Cain Sims," she admonished him 
solemnly, "ef I hed no mo' head-stuffin' 'n you- 
uns, I 'd git folks ter chain me up like that thar 
tame b'ar at Sayre's Mill, so ez 't would be knowed 
I warn't 'sponsible. Ye hev yer motions like him, 
an' ye kin scratch yer head like him, too ; but he 
can't talk sense, an' ye can't nuther." She paused 
for a moment ; then she condescended to explain : 
" I want that child Euphemy hyar kase she oughter 
hed a chance ter view that show las' night." 

His countenance changed. He too valued the 
"show" as a special privilege. He was woe for 
Euphemia's sake, away down yonder in the back- 
woods of Piomingo Cove. 

"Mebbe he mought gin another show over yan- 
der ter the Settlemint," he hazarded. "The folks 
over thar will be plumb sharp-set fur sech doin's 
whenst they hear 'bout'n it." 

The sophistications of polite society are not re- 
cognized by the medical faculty as amongst the 
epidemics which spread among mankind, but no 
contagious principle has so dispersive a quality in 
every feature of the malady. Given one show in 



THE JUGGLER. 45 

Etowah Cove, and Tubal Cain Sims developed the 
acumen of a keen impresario. He saw the oppor- 
tunity, counted the chances, evolved as an original 
idea — for the existence of such a scheme had 
never reached his ears — a successful starring tour 
around the coves and mountain settlements of the 
Great Smoky range. 

The melancholy expressed in the slow shaking 
of Mrs. Sinis's head aroused him from this project. 

"Naw," she said; "the fool way that the folks 
tuk on 'bout Satan — they 'd better hev the high- 
strikes 'count o' thar sins — an' thar theatenings 
an' sech will purvent him. He won't show agin. 
An' I be plumb afeard," she cried out in renewed 
vexation, "the man will get away from hyar 'thout 
viewin' Euphemy. I '11 be bound he hev never 
seen the like of her ! " with a joyous note of mater- 
nal pride. 

The pipe turned around in Tubal Sims's mouth, 
and the charge of fire and ashes and tobacco fell 
unheeded on the floor. Like a voice in his ears 
the echo of that strange cry of the sleeper came to 
him out of the deep darkness of the stormy mid- 
night, with the problem of its occult significance, 
with the terror of its possible meaning, and every 
other consideration slipped from his consciousness. 
The perception of the mental trouble expressed in 
the man's face, its confirmation even in the trifle 
of the unbaited hook, returned to Sims, with the 
determination that he must know more of him or 
get him out of the Cove before Euphemia's return. 



46 THE JUGGLER. 

"The man's dad-burned good-lookin'," he said to 
himself, perceiving the fact for the first time, since 
it had a personal application. "An' Phemie be 
powerful book-l'arned, an' be always scornin' the 
generality o' the young cusses round about, kase 
she knows more 'n they do. Mebbe he knows 
more 'n she do." He pondered for a moment on 
the improbability that daughter Euphemia's know- 
ledge, acquired at the little schoolhouse where the 
"show" had been held, was exceeded by the fund 
of information stored in the brain-pan of any single 
individual since the world began. At all events, 
anxiety, complications, familiar association in the 
sanctions of the fireside, impended. This was a 
man with a secret, and, innocent or guilty, a 
stranger to his host. He must be quick, for Mrs. 
Sims — transparent Mrs. Sims ! — was even now 
evolving methods by which Euphemia might be 
summoned jjeremptorily from Piomingo Cove, and 
canvassing means of transportation. She chuckled 
even amidst her anxieties. The juggler, in all his 
experience, — and his conversation now and again 
gave intimations that he was a man of cities and 
had seen much folk in his time, — had never 
viewed aught like Euphemia, and if scheming 
■ might avail, he should not leave Etowah Cove till 
this crowning mercy was vouchsafed him. 

Whether Tubal Sims vaunted his wife's mental 
qualities or derided them, — and his estimate 
swung like a pendulum from one side to the other, 
as her views coincided with his or differed from 



THE JUGGLER. 47 

them, — lie knew that on this topic she was im- 
movable. To pierce the juggler's heart by a dart 
still more mystic and subtle than aught his skill 
could wield was her motive. Help must come, if 
at all, from without the domestic circle. He 
waited, doubtful, until after dinner, and as he 
looked about for his hat, his resolution taken after 
much brooding thought, he noted a change in the 
weather - signs. The wind was blowing crisply 
through the open passage. The mists had lifted. 
The river, dully gurgling in the dreary early 
morning, had begun anew its lapsing sibilant song 
that seemed a concomitant of the sunshine; for 
the slanting afternoon glitter was on the water 
here and there, and high on the mountain side all 
the various green possible to spring foliage was 
elicited by the broad expanse of the golden sheen 
that came down from the west. He noted, as he 
took his way along the road, that the recumbent 
figure once again on the ledge below was not 
asleep, for the juggler lifted his hand as the rocks 
above began to reflect the beams on the water in 
a tremulous shimmer, and drew his hat further 
over his eyes. "Ye mought hev better comp'ny 
'n yer thoughts, Mr. Showman, I 'm a-thinkin'," 
Tubal Sims muttered, and he mended his pace. 

His path, much trodden, wended along about 
the base of the range, and finally, by a series of 
zigzag curves, began to ascend the slope. The 
clouds, white, tenuous, were flying high now. 
The sun had grown hot. Already the moisture 



48 THE JUGGLER. 

was dried from the wayside foliage of laurel as lie 
came iijjon the projecting spur of the range where 
the lime -burners worked. The logs, protected 
from the rain by a ledge of the cliff, had been 
piled anew with layers of limestone, and the primi- 
tive process of calcination had begun once more. 
Here and there were great heaps of fragments of 
rock placed close at hand, and numerous trees had 
been felled for fuel and lay at length on the 
ground, yet so dense was the forest that the loss 
was not appreciable to the eye. The stumps and 
boles of these trees furnished seats for a number 
of lounging mountaineers, in every attitude that 
might express a listless sloth. Those who had 
come to work felt that they had earned a respite 
from labor, and those who had come to talk has- 
tened to utilize the opportunity. Their conversa- 
tion was something more brisk than usual, acceler- 
ated by interest in a new and uncommon topic. As 
Sims had foreseen, the events of the previous even- 
ing occupied every thought, and several of the 
group experienced a freshened joy in detailing 
them anew to Peter Knowles, who alone of all the 
neighborhood for a circuit of twenty miles had 
been absent. He had heard every incident re- 
peatedly rehearsed without showing a sign of flag- 
ging interest. Now and then he bent his brows 
and looked down at the quicklime scattered on the 
ground, and silently meditated on its capacity to 
destroy flesh and bone and on the juggler's unhal- 
lowed curiosity. 



THE JUGGLER. 49 

"A body dunno how ter git his own cornsent 
ter b'lieve his own eyesight," one of the men re- 
flectively averred. The interval since witnessing 
the astounding feats of the prestidigitator had af- 
forded space for rumination, and but served to 
deepen the impression of possibilities set at naught 
and miracles enacted. 

"That thar man air in league with Satan," 
declared another. "Surely, surely he air." He 
accentuated his words with his long lean forefinger 
shaken impressively at the group. 

"Ye mark my words," said Peter Knowles sud- 
denly, still eying the refuse of quicklime on the 
ground, "no good hev kem inter the Cove with 
that thar man." 

"Whar 'd he kem from, ennyhows?" demanded 
the first speaker. 

"Whar 'd he kem from?" repeated Knowles, 
peering over the great kiln. "From hell, my 
frien', — straight from hell." 

He had the combined drone and whine which he 
esteemed appropriate to the clerical office; for 
although he had never experienced a "call," he 
deemed himself singularly fitted for that vocation 
by virtue of a disposition to hold forth at great 
length to any one who would listen to his views on 
religious themes, — and in this region, where time 
is plenty and industry scanty, he seldom lacked 
listeners, — a conscience ever sensitive to the sins 
of other people, and great freedom in the use of 
such Scriptural terms as are debarred to persons 



50 THE JUGGLER. 

not naturally profane or suffering under the stress 
of extreme rage. 

"Waal, sir! " exclaimed old man Cobbs, sitting 
on a stump and gently nursing his knee. He 
spoke with a voice of deep reprehension, and as 
simple an acceptance of the possibility of hailing 
from the place in question as if it were geographi- 
cally extant. 

Ormsby, who had been standing leaning on an 
axe, silently listening, laughed slightly at this, — 
an incredulous laugh. " Folks ez git ter that ken- 
try don't git back in a hurry," he drawled negli- 
gently, but with a manifest satisfaction in the cir- 
cumstance, as if he knew of sundry departed 
wights whom he esteemed well placed. 

" How d' ye know they don't ? " demanded Peter 
Knowles. "Ain't ye never read the Scriptures 
enough ter sense them lines, ' Satan was a-walkin' 
up and down through the yearth,' ye blunderin' 
buzzard, an' he fell from heaven? " 

The young fellow's robust figure was clearly 
defined against the western sky. He swung his 
axe nonchalantly now, for to be an adept in read- 
ing and remembering the Scriptures was not the 
height of his ambition. Nevertheless, the idea of 
the possibility of being in the orbit, as it were, of 
an earthly stroll of the Prince of Darkness roused 
him to argument and insistence on a less terrifying 
solution of the mystery. 

"He telled it ter me ez he kem from Happy 
Valley," he volunteered. 



THE JUGGLER. 51 

The elders of the party stared at one another. 
The fire roared suddenly as a log broke, burned in 
twain; the limestone fragments, still crude, went 
rattling down into the crevices its fall had made. 
Peter Knowles's arm, with the free ministerial 
gesticulation which he was wont to copy, fixed the 
absurdity upon Ormsby even before he spoke. 

"Don't ye know that thar Philistine ain't got 
sech speech ez them ez lives in Happy Valley, nor 
thar clothes, nor thar raisin', nor thar manners, 
nor thar ways, nor thar — nuthin' ? Don't you- 
uns sense that? " 

"I 'lowed ez much ter him," replied Ormsby, 
a trifle browbeaten by the seniority of his inter- 
locutor and the difficulty of the subject. "I up-ed 
an' said, ' Ye ain't nowise like folks ez live in 
Happy Valley. Ter look at ye, I 'd set it down 
fur true ez ye hed never been in the shadder o' 
Chilhowee all yer days.' " 

"An' what did he say, bub?" demanded old 
man Cobbs gently, after a moment of waiting. 

"Great Gosh, yes!" exclaimed Peter Knowles 
explosively. "We-uns ain't a-waitin' hyar ter 
hear you-uns tell yer talk; ennybody could hev 
said that an' mo'. What did the man say? " 

Ormsby turned doubtfully toward the descend- 
ing sun and the reddening sky. "We-uns war 
a-huntin', me an' that juggler. I seen him yes- 
tiddy mornin'. I went down thar ter Mis' Sims' 
an' happened ter view him. An' I loant him my 
brother's 2.va\. An' whenst I said that 'bout his 



52 THE JUGGLER. 

looks an' sech, we wara-huntin', an' lie 'peared not 
ter know thar war enny Happy Valley 'way over 
yander by Chilliowee. An' I tuk him np high on 
the mounting- whar he could look over fur off an' see 
the Rich Woods an' Happy Valley, an' — an' " — 
He paused. 

"An' what did he say?" inquired Knowles 
eagerly. 

Ormsby looked embarrassed. "He jes' say," 
he went on suddenly, as if with an effort, "he jes' 
say, ' Oh, Dr. Johnson! ' an' bust out a-laffin'. I 
dunno what the critter meant." 

Once more Ormsby turned, swinging his axe in 
his strong right hand, and glanced absently over 
the landscape. 

The sun was gone. The mountains, darkly 
glooming, rose high above the Cove on every side, 
seeming to touch the translucent amber sky that, 
despite the sunken sun, conserved an effect of illu- 
mination heightened by contrast with the fringes 
of hemlock and pine, that had assumed a sombre 
purple hue, waving against its crystalline concave. 
In this suffusion of reflected color, rather than in 
the medium of daylight, he beheld the scanty fields 
below in the funnel-like basin ; for this projecting 
spur near the base of the range gave an outlook 
over the lower levels at hand. Some cows, he 
could discern, were still wending homeward along 
an undulating red clay road, which rose and fell 
till the woods intervened. The woods were black. 
Night was afoot there amongst the shadowy boughs, 



THE JUGGLER. 53 

for all the golden glow of the feigning sky. The 
evening mists were adrift along the ravines. Ever 
and anon the flames flickered out, red and yellow, 
from the heap of logs. Not a sound stirred the 
group as they pondered on this strange reply, till 
Ormsby said reflectively, "The juggler be toler'ble 
good comp'ny, though, — nuthin' like the devil 
an' sech; leastwise, so much ez I know 'bout 
Satan," — he seemed to defer to the superior ac- 
quaintanceship of Knowles. "This hyar valley- 
man talks powerful pleasant; an' he kin sing, — 
jes' set up an' sing like a ijlumb red-headed mock- 
in '-bird, that 's what! You-vms hearn him sing at 
the show," — he turned from Knowles to appeal to 
the rest of the group. 

"Did he 'pear ter you-uns, whilst huntin', ter 
try enny charms an' spells on the wild critters?" 
asked Knowles. 

"They didn't work ef he did! " exclaimed Jack 
Ormsby, with a great gush of laughter that startled 
the echoes into weird unmirthful response. "He 
shot one yallerhammer arter travelin' nigh ten 
mile ter git him." After a pause, "I gin him the 
best chance at a deer I ever hed. I never see 
a feller hev the ' buck ager ' so bad. He never 
witched that deer. He shot plumb two feet too 
high. She jes' went a-bouncin' by him down the 
mounting, — ^bouncin' yit, I reckon! But he kin 
shoot toler'ble fair at a mark." The ready laugh- 
ter again lighted his face. "He 'lows he likes a 
mark ter shoot at kase it stands still. He 's plumb 
pleasant comp'ny sure." 



54 THE JUGGLER. 

"Waal, he ain't been secli powerful pleasant 
comp'ny down ter my house," protested Tubal 
Sims. "Ain't got a word ter say, an' 'pears like 
he ain't got the heart ter eat a mouthful o' vittles. 
Yander he hev been a-lyin' flat on them wet rocks 
all ter-day, with no mo' keer o' the rheumatics 'n 
ef he war a bullfrog, — a-feeshin' in the ruver 
with a hook 'thout no bait on it." 

"What 'd he ketch?" demanded one of the 
men, with a quick glance of alarm. Miracles for 
the purpose of exhibition and cutting a dash they 
esteemed far less repellent to the moral sense than 
the use of uncommon powers to serve the ordinary 
purposes of daily life. 

"Pleurisy, ef he got his deserts," observed the 
disafPected host. "He caught nuthin' with ez 
much sense ez a stickle-back. 'Pears ter me he 
ain't well, nohow. He groaned a power in his 
sleep las' night, arter the show. An'" — he felt 
he ventured on dangerous ground — "he talked, 
too." 

There was a significant silence. "That thar 
man hev got suthin' on his mind," muttered Peter 
Knowles. 

"I be powerful troubled myself," returned the 
level-headed Sims weakly. "I oughtn't ter hev 
tuk him in, — him a stranger, though" — he re- 
membered the hospitable text in time for a flimsy 
self-justification. "But 't war a-stormin' power- 
ful, and he 'peared plumb beat out. I 'lowed 
that night he war goin' inter some sort'n fever ov 



THE JUGGLER. 55 

dee-lerium. I put him inter the roof-room, an' 
he went ter bed ez soon ez he could git thar. But 
the nex' day he war ez fraish an' gay ez a jay- 
bird." 

"What 's he talk 'bout wlienst sleepin'?" asked 
Peter Knowles, his covert glance once more revert- 
ing to the refuse of quicklime at his feet. 

"Suthin' he never lays his tongue ter whenst 
wakin', I'll be bound," replied Tubal Sims pre- 
cipitately. Then he hesitated. This disclosure 
was, he felt, a flagrant breach of hospitality. 
What right had he to listen to the disjointed ex- 
clamations of his guest in his helplessness as he 
slept, place his own interpretation upon them, and 
retail them to others for their still more inimical 
speculation ? Jane Ann Sims, — how he would 
have respected her judgment had she been a man ! 
— he was sure, would not have given the words a 
second thought. But then her habit of mind was 
incredulous. Parson Greenought often told her 
that he feared her faith was not sufficient to take 
her to heaven. "I be dependin' on suthin' bet- 
ter 'n that, pa'son," she would smilingly rejoin. 
"I ain't lookin' ter my own pore mind an' my 
own wicked heart fur holp. An' ye mark my 
words, I '11 be the fust nangel ye shake ban's with 
when ye git inside the golden door." And the 
parson, impaled on his own weapons, could only 
suggest that they should sing a hymn together, 
which they did, — Jane Ann Sims much the louder 
of the two. 



56 THE JUGGLER. 

Admirable woman ! she had but a single weak- 
ness, and this Tubal Cain Sims was aware that he 
shared. With the returning thought of their 
household idol, Euphemia, every consideration im- 
posing reticence vanished. 

"Last night," he began suddenly, "I war so 
conflusticated with the goin's-on ez I couldn't 
sleep fur a while. An' ez I sot downsteers afore 
the fire, I could but take notice o' how oneasy this 
man 'peared in his sleep up in the roof-room. He 
sighed an' groaned like suthin' in agony. An' 
then he says, so painful, ' But the one who lives — 
oh, what can I do — the one who lives! fur his 
life ! — his life ! — his life ! ' " He paused abruptly, 
to mark the petrified astonishment on the group of 
faces growing white in the closing dusk. 

An owl began to hoot in the bosky recesses far 
up the slope. At the sound, carrying far in the 
twilight stillness, a hound bayed from the door of 
the little cabin in the Cove, by the river. A light, 
stellular in the gloom that hung about the lower 
levels, suddenly sprung up in the window. A 
tremulous elongated reflection shimmered in the 
shallows close under the bank where the juggler 
had been lying. Was he there yet ? Sims won- 
dered, quivering with the excitement of the mo- 
ment. 

His anxiety was not quelled, but a great relief 
came upon him when Peter Knowles echoed his own 
thought, which seemed thvis the natural sequence 
of the event, and not some far-fetched fantasy. 



THE JUGGLER. 57 

"That thar man hev killed somebody, ez sure ez 
ye live!" exclaimed Peter Knowles. "'But the 
one who lives! ' An' who is the one who died?" 

"Jes' so, jes' so," interpolated Sims, reassured 
to see his own mental process so definitely dupli- 
cated in the thoughts of a man held to be of expe- 
rienced and just judgment, and much regarded in 
the community. 

"He be a-runnin' from jestice," resumed 
Knowles. "He ain't no juggler, ez he calls his- 
self." 

There was a general protest. 

"Shucks, Pete, ye oughter seen him swaller a 
bay 'net." 

"An' Mis' Sims tole him she 'd resk her shears 
on it, she jes' felt so reckless an' plumb kerried 
away. An' he swallered them, too, an' then tuk 
'em out'n his throat, sharp ez ever." 

"An' he swallered a paper o' needles an' a 
spool o' thread, an' brung 'em out'n his mouth all 
threaded." 

There was a delighted laugh rippling round the 
circle. 

" Look-a-hyar, my frien's," remonstrated Peter 
Knowles in a solemn, sepulchral voice, "I never 
viewed none o' these doin's, but ye air all 'bleeged 
ter know ez they air on-possible, the devices o' the 
devil. An' hyar ye be, perfessin' Christians, 
a-laffin' at them wiles ez air laid ter delude the 
on wary." 

There was a general effort to recover a sobri- 



58 THE JUGGLER. 

ety of demeanor, and one of tlie men then observed 
gravely that on the occasion when these wonders 
were exhibited Parson Benias Greenought taxed 
the performer with this supposition. 

"Waal," remarked Ormsby, "ye air 'bleeged 
ter hev tuk notice, ef ye war thar las' night, ez 
old Benias never moved toe or toe-nail till arter all 
the jinks war most over. He seen nigh all thar 
war ter see 'fore he 'lowed how the sinners war 
enj'yin' tharse'fs, an' called up the devil ter len' 
a han'." 

"What the man say?" demanded Peter 
Knowles. 

"He 'peared cornsider'ble set back a-fust, an' 
then he tried ter laff it off," replied Gideon Beck. 
"He 'lowed he could I'arn sech things ter folks ez 
he had I'arnt 'em, too." 

"Now tell me one thing," argued Peter Knowles; 
"how's a man goin' ter I'arn a pusson ter put a 
persimmon seed in a pail o' yearth, an' lay a cloth 
over it, an' sing some foolishness, an' take off'n 
the cloth, an' thar 's a persimmon shoot with a 
root ez long ez my han' a-growin' in that yearth? " 

There were sundry gravely shaken heads. 

"Mis' Jernigan jes' went plumb inter the high- 
strikes, she got so sheered, an' they hed ter take 
her home in the wagon," said Beck. 

"Old man Jernigan hed none; the las' time I 
viewed him he war a -try in' ter s waller old Mis' 
Jernigan s big shears hisse'f," retorted Ormbsy. 

"Mis' Jernigan ain't never got the rights o' 



THE JUGGLER. 59 

herself yit, an' her cow hev clone gone dry, too," 
observed Beck. 

"Tell me, my brethren, what 's them words mean, 
— 'the one who lives'?" insisted Peter Knowles 
significantly. "Sure 's ye air born, thar 's another 
verse an' chapter ter that sayin'. Who war the 
one who died? " 

Once more awe settled down upon the little 
group. The wind had sprung up. Now and 
again pennons of flame flaunted out from the great 
heap of logs and stones, and threw livid bars of 
light athwart the landscape, which pulsated visibly 
as the blaze rose and fell, — now seeming strangely 
distinct and near at hand, now receding into the 
darkness and distance. Mystery affiliated with 
the time and place, and there was scant responsive- 
ness to Ormsby's protest as he once more sought 
to befriend the absent juggler. 

"I can't git my cornsent ter b'lieve ez thar be 
enny dead one. I reckon the feller war talkin' 
'bout his kemin' powerful nigh dyin' hisself. He 
'lowed ter me ez he lied a mighty great shock jes' 
afore he kem hyar, — what made him so diff 'ent 
a-fust." 

"Shocked by lightning?" demanded Peter 
Knowles dubiously. 

"I reckon so; never hearn on no other kind." 

"Waal, now," said Tubal Sims, who had sought 
during this discussion to urge his views on the 
coterie, "I 'low that the Cove ought not ter take 
up with sech jubious doin's ez these." 



60 THE JUGGLER. 

"Lawsy massy! " exclaimed Beck, with the up- 
lifted eyebrows of derision, "las' night you-nns 
an' Mis' Sims too 'peared plumb kerried away, 
jes' bodaciously dee-lighted, with the juggler an' 
all his pay-formances ! " 

There is naught in all our moral economy which 
can suffer a change without discredit and dispar- 
agement, barring what is known as a change of 
heart. It is a clumsy and awkward mental evolu- 
tion at best, as the turncoat in politics, the apolo- 
gist for discarded friendships, the fickle-minded in 
religious doctrines, know to their cost. The pro- 
cess of veering is attended invariably with a poign- 
ant mortification, as if one had warranted one's 
opinions infallible, and to endure till time shall be 
no more. Tubal Cain Sims experienced all the 
ignominious sensations known as "eatin' crow," 
as he sought to qualify his satisfaction of the pre- 
vious evening, and reconcile it to his complete 
change of sentiment now, without giving his true 
reason. It would involve scant courtesy to the 
absent Euphemia to intimate his fears lest she 
admire too much the juggler, and it might excite 
ridicule to suggest his certainty that the juggler 
would admire her far too much. Sometimes, in- 
deed, he doubted if other people — - that is, above 
the age of twenty -five — entertained the rapturous 
estimate of Euphemia, which was a subject on 
which he and Jane Ann Sims never differed. 

"I did, — I did," he sputtered. "Me an' Jane 
Ann nare one never seen no harm in the pay-form- 



THE JUGGLER. 61 

ance. An' Jane Ann don't know nuthin' con- 
trarions yit, kase I ain't tole her, — she bein' a 
'oman, an' liable ter talk free an' let her tongue 
git a-goin'; she dunno whar ter stop. A man 
ought n't ter tell his wife sech ez he aims ter go 
no furder," he added discursively. 

" 'Thout he wants all the Cove ter be a-gabblin' 
over it nex' day," assented a husband of three 
experiments. "I know wiramin. Lawsy massy! 
I know 'em now." He shook his head lugubri- 
ously, as if his education in feminine quirks and 
wiles had gone hard with him, and he could will- 
ingly have dispensed with a surplusage of learning. 

"But arter I hearn them strange words," re- 
sumed Tubal Cain Sims, — "them strange words, 
so painful an' pitiful-spoken, — I di'awed the same 
idee ez Peter Knowles thar. I 'lowed the juggler 
war some sort'n evil-doer agin the law, — though 
he didn't look like it ter me." 

"He did ter. me; he featured it from the fust," 
Knowles protested, with a stern drawing down of 
his forbidding face. 

There was a momentary pause while they all 
seemed to meditate on the evidence afforded by the 
personal appearance of the juggler. 

"I be afeard," continued Sims, glancing at 
Knowles, "like Pete say, he hev c'mmitted murder 
an' be fleein' from the law. An' I be a law- 
abidin' citizen — an' — an' — he can't stay at my 
house." 

There was silence. No one was interested in 



62 THE JUGGLER. 

the impeccability of Tubal Cain Sims's house. It 
was his castle. He was free to say who should 
come and who should go. His own responsibility 
was its guarantee. 

It is a pathetic circumstance in human affairs 
that the fact of how little one's personal difficul- 
ties and anxieties and turmoils of mind count to 
one's friends can only be definitely ascertained by 
the experiment made in the thick of these troubles. 

With a sudden return of his wonted perspica- 
city, Sims said, "That thar man oughter be gin 
notice ter leave. I call on ye all — ye all live 
round 'bout the Cove — ter git him out'n it." 

There was a half -articulate grumble of protest 
and surprise. 

"It's yer business ter make him go, ef yer 
don't want him in yer house," said Peter Knowles, 
looking loweringly at Sims. 

"I ain't got nuthin' agin him," declared Sims 
excitedly, holding both empty palms upward. "I 
can't say, ' Git out; ye talk in yer sleep, an' ye 
don't talk ter suit me!' Biit,^^ fixing the logic 
upon them with weighty emphasis and a significant 
pause, "you-uns all b'lieve ez he air in league 
with Satan, an' his jinks air deviltries an' sech. 
An' so be, ye ought ter make him take hisself an' 
his conjurin's off from hyar 'fore he witches the 
craps, or spirits away the lime, or tricks the mill, 
or — He ought ter be gin hours ter cl'ar out." 

Peter Knowles roused himself to argument. He 
had developed a vivid curiosity concerning the 



THE JUGGLER. 63 

juggler. The suggestion of the devil's agency- 
was a far cry to his fears, — be it remembered he 
had not seen the bayonet swallowed ! — and he had 
phenomenal talents for contrariety, and graced the 
opposition with great persistence and powers of 
contradiction. 

"Bein' ez ye hev reason ter suspect that man o' 
murder or sech, we-uns ain't got the right ter give 
him hours ter leave. Ye ain't got the right ter 
turn him out'n yer house ter escape from the off'- 
cers o' the law." 

The crowd, always on the alert for a sensation, 
pricked up their willing ears. "Naw, ye ain't," 
more than one asseverated. 

'"T would jes' be holpin' him on his run from 
jestice," declared Beck. "Further he gits, fur- 
ther the slier 'ff '11 hev ter f oiler, an' mo' chance 
o' losin' him." 

"They be on his track now, I reckon," said old 
Josiah Cobbs dolorously. 

"It 's the jewty o' we-uns in the Cove," resumed 
Peter Knowles, "ter keep a stric' watch on him 
an' see ter it he don't git away 'fore the sher'ff 
tracks him hyar." 

Tubal Sims's blood ran cold. A man sitting 
daily at his table under the espionage of all the 
Cove as a murderer ! A man sleeping in his best 
feather-bed — and the way he floundered in its un- 
accustomed depths nothing but a jiorpoise could 
emulate — till the sheriff of the county should come 
to hale him out to the ignominious quarters of the 



64 THE JUGGLER. 

common jail! Jane Ann Sims — how his heart 
sank as he thought that had he first taken counsel 
of her he would not now be in a position to receive 
his orders from Peter Knowles ! — to be in daily- 
friendly association with this strange guest, to be 
sitting at home now calmly stitching cuffs for a 
man who might be wearing handcuffs before day- 
light! Euphemia — when he thought of Euphe- 
mia he rose precipitately from the rock on which 
he was seated. In twenty-four hours Euphemia 
should be in Buncombe County, North Carolina, 
where his sister lived. The juggler should never 
see her; for who knew what, lengths Jane Ann 
Sims's vicarious love of admiration would carry 
her? If the man were but on his knees, what 
cared she what the Cove thought of him? And 
Euphemia should never see the juggler! Tubal 
Sims hurried down the darkening way, hearing 
without heeding the voices of his late comrades, 
all dispersing homeward by devious paths, — now 
loud in the still twilight, now veiled and indistinct 
in the distance. The chirring of the myriad noc- 
turnal insects was rising from every bush, louder, 
more confident, refreshed by the recent rain, and 
the frogs chanted by the riverside. 

He had reached the lower levels at last. He 
glanced up and saw the first timid palpitant star 
spring forth with a glitter into the midst of the 
neutral-tinted ether, and then, as if affrighted at 
the vast voids of the untenanted skies, disappear 
so elusively that the eye might not mark the spot 



THE JUGGLER. 65 

where that white crystalline flake had trembled. 
It was early yet. He strode up to his own house, 
whence the yellow light glowed from the window. 
He stopped suddenly, his heart sinking like lead. 
There on the step of the passage sat Euphemia, 
her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, her 
eyes pensively fixed on the uncertain kindling of 
that pioneer star once more blazing out the road 
in the evening sky. 



III. 

EuPHEMiA could hardly have said what it was 
that had brought her home, — some vague yet po- 
tent impulse, some occult, unimagined power of 
divination, some subjection to her mother's will 
constraining her, or simply the intuition that there 
was some opportunity for mischief unimproved. 
Tubal Cain Sims shook his head dubiously as he 
canvassed each theory. He ventured to ask the 
views of Mrs. Sims, after he had partaken of the 
supper set aside for him — for the meal was con- 
cluded before his return — and had lighted his 
pipe. 

"What brung her home? Them stout leetle 
brogans, — that's what," said Mrs. Sims, chuc- 
kling between the whiffs of her own pipe. 

"Course I know the chile walked. I reckon 
she '11 hev stone-bruises a plenty arter this, — full 
twelve mile. But what put it inter her head ter 
kem? She 'lowed ter me she ain't dreamed o' 
nuthin', 'ceptin' Spot hed a new calf, which she 
ain't got. Reckon 'twar a leadin' or a warnin' 
or" — 

"I reckon 'twar homesickness. Young gals 
always pine fur home, special ef thar ain't nuthin' 
spry goin' on in a new place." And once more 



THE JUGGLER. 67 

Jane Ann Sims, in the plenitude of her triumph, 
chuckled. 

It chanced, that afternoon, that when the red 
sunset was aflare over the bronze-green slopes that 
encircled the Cove, and the great pine near at 
hand began to sway and to sing and to cast forth 
the rich benison of its aroma to the fresh rain- 
swept air, the juggler roused himself, pushed back 
his hat from his eyes, and gazed with listless mel- 
ancholy about him. Somehow the sweet peace 
of the secluded place appealed to his world-weary 
senses. The sounds, — the distant, mellow lowing 
of the kine, homeward wending; the tinkle of a 
sheep-bell; the rhythmic dash of the river; the 
ecstatic cadenzas of a mocking-bird, so intricate, 
delivered with such dashing elan^ so marvelously 
clear and sweet and high as to give an effect as of 
glitter, — all were so harmoniously bucolic. He 
was soothed in a measure, or dulled, as he drew 
a long sigh of relief and surcease of pain, and 
began to experience that facile renewal of interest 
common to youth with all its recuperative facul- 
ties. It fights a valiant fight with sorrow or trou- 
ble, and only the years conquer it at last. For 
the first time he noted among the budding willows 
far down the stream a roof all aslant, which he 
divined at once was the mill. He rose to his feet 
with a quickening curiosity. As he released the 
futile fishing-rod and wound up the line he re- 
marked the unbaited hook. His face changed 
abruptly with the thought of his absorption and 
trouble. He pitied himself. 



68 THE JUGGLER. 

The road down which he took his way described 
many a curve seeking to obviate the precipitous- 
ness of the descent. The rocks rose high on either 
side for a time, and when the scene beyond broke 
upon him in its entirety it was as if a curtain were 
suddenly lifted. How shadowy, how fragrant the 
budding woods above the calm and lustrous water ! 
The mill, its walls canted askew, dark and soaked 
with the rain, and its mossy roof awry, was sombre 
and silent. Over the dam the water fell in an un- 
broken crystal sheet so smooth and languorous that 
it seemed motionless, as if under a spell. Ferns 
were thick on a marshy slope opposite, where scat- 
tered boulders lay, and one quivering blossomy 
bough of a dogwood-tree leaned over its white re- 
flection in the water, fairer than itself, like some 
fond memory embellishing the thing it images. 

With that sudden sense of companionship in 
loneliness by which a presence is felt before it is 
perceived, he turned sharply back as he was about 
to move away, and glanced again toward the mill. 
A young girl was standing in the doorway in an 
attitude of arrested poise, as if in surprise. 

Timidity was not the juggler's besetting sin. 
He lifted his hat with a courteous bow, the like 
of which had never been seen in Etowah Cove, 
and thus commending himself to her attention, he 
took his way toward her along the slant of the 
corduroy road; for this fleeting glimpse afforded 
to him a more vivid suggestion of interest than the 
Cove had as yet been able to present. For the 



THE JUGGLER. 69 

first time since reaching its confines it occurred to 
him that it might be possible to live along awhile 
yet. Nevertheless, he contrived to keep his eyes 
decorously void of expression, and occupied them 
for the most part in aiding his feet to find their 
way among the crevices and obstacles with which 
the road abounded. \Yhen he paused, he asked, 
suffering his eyes to rest inquiringly on the girl, 
" Beg pardon, but will you kindly inform me where 
is the miller?" 

The glimpse that had so attracted him was, he 
felt, all inadequate, as he stood and gazed, privi- 
leged by virtue of his simulated interest in the 
absent miller. He could not have seen from the 
distance how fair, how dainty, was her complexion, 
nor the crinkles and sparkles of gold in her fine 
brown hair. It waved upward from her low brow 
in a heavy undulation which he would have dis- 
criminated as "a la Pompadour," but its contour 
was compassed by wearing far backward a round 
comb, the chief treasure of her possessions, the 
heavy masses of hair rising smoothly toward the 
front, and falling behind in long, loose ringlets 
about her shoulders. She had a delicate chin with 
a deep dimple, — which last reminded him unplea- 
santly of Mrs. Sims, for dimples were henceforth 
at a discount ; a fine, thin, straight nose ; two dark 
silken eyebrows, each describing a perfect arc; 
and surely there were never created for the be- 
guilement of man two such large, lustrous gray- 
blue eyes, long-lashed, deep-set, as those which 



70 THE JUGGLER. 

served Euphemia Sims for the comparatively un- 
important function of vision. He had hardly been 
certain whether her attire was more or less gro- 
tesque than the costume of the other mountain 
women vmtil she lifted these eyes and completed the 
charm of the unique apparition. She wore a calico 
bought by the yard at the store, and accounted but 
a flimsy fabric by the homespun-weaving mountain 
women. It was of a pale green tint, and had once 
been sprinkled over with large dark green leaves. 
Lye soap and water had done their merciful work. 
The strong crude color of the leaves had been sub- 
dued to a tint but little deeper than the ground of 
the material, and while the contour of the foliage 
was retained, it was mottled into a semblance 
of light and shade here and there where the dye 
strove to hold fast. The figure which it draped 
was pliant and slender; the feet which the full 
skirt permitted to be half visible were small, and 
arrayed in brown hose and the stout little brogans 
which had brought her so nimbly from Piomingo 
Cove. Partly amused, partly contemptuous, partly 
admiring, the juggler remarked her hesitation and 
embarrassment, and relished it as of his own in- 
spiring. 

"Waal," she drawled at last, "I don't rightly 
know." She gazed at him doubtfully. "Air ye 
wantin' ter see him special?" 

He had a momentary terror lest she should ask 
liim for his grist and unmask his subterfuge. He 
sought refuge in candor, " Well, I was admiring 



THE JUGGLER. 71 

the mill. This is a pretty spot, and I wished to 
ask the miller's name." 

There was a flash of laughter in her eyes, al- 
though her lips were grave. "His name be Tubal 
Sims; an' ef he don't prop up his old mill some- 
hows, it'll careen down on him some day." She 
added, with asperity, "I dunno what ye be admir- 
in' it fur, 'thout it air ter view what a s'prisin' 
pitch laziness kin kem ter." 

"That's what I admire. I'm a proficient, a 
professor of the science of laziness." 

She lifted her long black lashes only a little as 
she gazed at him with half -lowered lids. "Ye 
won't find no pupiZs in that science hyar about. 
The Cove's done graduated." She smiled slightly, 
as if to herself. The imagery of her response, 
drawn from her slender experience at the school- 
house, pleased her for the moment, but she had no 
disposition toward further conversational triumphs. 
There ensued a short silence, and then she looked 
at him in obvious surprise that he did not take 
himself off. It would seem that he had got what 
he had come for, — the miller's name and the 
opportunity to admire the mill. He experienced 
in his turn a momentary embarrassment. He was 
so conscious of the superiority of his social status, 
knowledge of the world, and general attainments 
that her apparent lack of comprehension of his 
condescension in lingering to admire also the 
miller's daughter was subversive in some sort of 
his wonted aplomb. It rallied promptly, however, 



72 THE JUGGLER. 

and he went on with a certain half -veiled mocking 
courtesy, of which the satire of the sentiment was 
only vaguely felt through the impervious words. 

"I presume you are the miller's daughter?" 

She looked at him in silent acquiescence. 

"Then I am happy to make an acquaintance 
which kind fortune has been holding in store for 
me, for my stay in the Cove is at the miller's hos- 
pitable home." He concluded with a smiling 
flourish. But her bewitching eyes gazed seriously 
at him. 

"What be yer name? " she demanded succinctly. 

" Leonard, — John Leonard, — very much at 
your service," he replied, with an air half banter, 
half propitiation. 

"Ye be the juggler that mam 's been talkin' 
'bout," she said as if to herself, completing his 
identification. "I drawed the idee from what 
mam said ez ye war a old pusson — at least corn- 
sider'ble on in years." 

"And so I am! " he cried, with a sudden change 
of tone. "If life is measured by what we feel and 
what we suffer, I am old," — he paused with a 
sense of self -betrayal, — "some four or five hun- 
dred at least," he added, relapsing into his wonted 
light tone. 

She shook her head sagely. "'Pears-like ter 
me ez it mought be medjured by the sense folks 
gather ez they go. I hev knowed some mighty 
young fools at sixty." 

The color showed in his face; her unconscious 



THE JUGGLER. 73 

intimation of his youth according to this method 
of estimate touched his vanity, even evoked a 
slight resentment. 

"You are an ancient dame, on that theory! I 
bow to your wisdom, madam, — quite the soberest 
party I have seen since I entered the paradisaical 
seclusion of Etowah Cove." 

She appreciated the belligerent note in his voice, 
although she scarcely apprehended the casus belli. 
There was, however, a responsive flash in her eye, 
which showed she was game in any quarrel. No 
tender solicitude animated her lest unintentionally 
she had wounded the feelings of this pilgrim and 
stranger. He had taken the liberty to be of- 
fended when no offense was intended, and per- 
haps with the laudable desire to give him, as it 
were, something to cry for, she struck back as best 
she might. 

"Not so sober ez some o' them folks ye gin yer 
show afore, over yander at the Notch. I hearn 
they war fit ter weep an' pray arterward. Mam 
'lowed ye made 'em sober fur sure." 

He was genuinely nettled at this thrust. His 
feats of jugglery had resulted so contrary to his 
expectations, had roused so serious a danger, that 
he did not even in his own thoughts willingly re- 
vert to them. He turned away on one heel of the 
pointed russet shoes that had impressed the deni- 
zens of Etowah Cove hardly less unpleasantly than 
a cloven hoof, and looked casu.ally down the long 
darkly lustrous vista of the river; for the mill 



74 THE JUGGLER. 

SO projected over the water that the point of view 
was as if it were anchored in midstream. The 
green boughs leaned far over the smooth shadowy 
current; here and there, where a half -submerged 
rock lifted its jagged summit above the surface, 
the water foamed preternaturally white in the 
sylvan glooms. He had a cursory impression 
of many features calculated to give pleasure to the 
eye, were his mind at ease to enjoy such trifles, 
and his sense alert to mark them : the moss on the 
logs, and the lichen; the tangle of the trumpet- 
vines, all the budding tendrils blowing with the 
breeze, that clambered over the rickety structure, 
and hung down from the apex of the high roof, 
and swayed above the portal; even the swift 
motion of a black snake swimming sinuously in 
the clear water, and visible through the braiding 
of the currents as through corrugated glass. 

"No," he said, his teeth set together, his eyes 
still far down the stream, "I did my little best, 
but my entertainment was not a success; and if 
that fact makes you merry, I wish you joy of your 
mirth." 

His eyes returned to her expectantly; he was 
not altogether unused to sounding the cultivated 
feminine heart, trained to sensibility and suscepti- 
ble to many a specious sophistry. Naught he had 
found more efficacious than an appeal for sympa- 
thy to those who have sympathy in bulk and on 
call. The attribution, also, of a motive trenching 
on cruelty, and unauthorized by fact, was usually 



THE JUGGLER. 75 

wont to occasion a flutter of protest and contri- 
tion. 

Eupliemia Sims met his gaze in calm silence. 
She had intended no mirth at his expense, and if 
he were minded to evolve it gratuitously he was 
welcome to his illusion. Aught that she had said 
had been to return or parry a blow. She spoke 
advisedly. There was no feigning of gentleness 
in her, no faltering nor turning back. She stood 
stanehly ready to abide by her words. She had 
known no assumption of that pretty superficial 
feminine tendresse^ so graceful a garb of identity, 
and she could not conceive of him as an object of 
pity because her sarcasm had cut deeper than his 
own. He had an impression that he had indeed 
reached primitive conditions. The encounter with 
an absolute candor shocked his mental jDreposses- 
sions as a sudden dash of cold water might startle 
the nerves. 

He was all at once very tired of the mill, ex- 
tremely tired of his companion. The very weight 
of the fishing-rod and its unbaited hook was a 
burden. He was making haste to take himself off 

— he hardly knew where — from one weariness of 
spirit to another. Despite the lesson he had had, 
that he would receive of her exactly the measure 
of consideration that he meted out, he could not 
refrain from a half -mocking intimation as he said, 
" And do you propose to take up your abode down 
here, that you linger so long in this watery place, 

— a nymph, a naiad, or a grace?" He glanced 
slightingly down the dusky bosky vista. 



76 THE JUGGLER. 

She was not even discomfited by his manner. 
"I kem down hyar," she remarked, the interest 
of her errand paramount for the moment, "I kem 
down ter the mill ter see ef I couldn't find some 
seconds. They make a sort o' change arter eatin' 
white flour awhile." 

He was not culinary in his tastes, and he had 
no idea what "seconds" might be, unless indeed 
he encountered them in their transmogrified estate 
as rolls on the table. 

"And having found them, may I crave the plea- 
sure of escorting you up the hill to the paternal 
domicile ? I observe the shadows are growing very 
long." 

"You-uns may kerry the bag," she replied, with 
composure, "an' I '11 kerry the fishin'-pole." 

Thus it was he unexpectedly found himself plod- 
ding along the romantic road he had so lately tra- 
versed, with a bag of "seconds" on his shoulder, 
— "a veritable beast of burden," he said sarcasti- 
cally to himseK, — while Euphemia Sims's light, 
airy figure loitered along the perfumed ways in 
advance of him, her cloudy curls waving slightly 
with the motion and the breeze; the fishing-rod 
was over her shoulder, and on the end of it where 
the unbaited hook was wound with the line her 
green sunbonnet was perched, flouncing like some 
great struggling thing that the angler had caught. 

It did not occur to him, so impressed was he 
with the grotesque oflice to which he had descended 
and the absurd result of the interview, that her 



THE JUGGLER. 77 

errand to the mill must have anticipated some bur- 
lier strength than her own to carry the "seconds" 
home, until as they turned an abrupt curve where 
the high rocks rose on either side they met a man 
with an axe in his hand walking rapidly toward 
them. He paused abruptly at the sight of them, 
and the juggler laughed aloud in scornful derision 
of his burden. 

Then recognizing Ormsby he cried out cheerily, 
"Hello, friend, whither bound?" So acute had 
his sensibilities become that he had a sense of 
recoil from the surly mutinous stare with which 
his friendly young acquaintance of the previous 
evening received his greeting. Ormsby mumbled 
something about a fish-trap and passed on swiftly 
toward the river. Swift as he was it was obvi- 
ously impossible that he could even have gained 
the margin and returned without a pause when 
he passed again, walking with a long rapid stride, 
swinging his axe doggedly, his hat pulled down 
over his brow, his eyes downcast, and with not even 
a flimsy affectation of ' an exchange of civilities. 

"Now, the powers forbid," thought the juggler, 
"that I shall run into any such hornet's nest as 
interfering with this Corydon and Phyllis. Surely 
sufficient vials of wrath have been poured out on 
my head without uncorking this peculiar and 
deadly essence of jealousy which all three of us 
cannot hope to survive." 

He looked anxiously up from his bent posture, 
carrying the bag well up on his shoulders, at the 



78 THE JUGGLER. 

quickly disappearing figure of the young moun- 
taineer. He did not doubt that Ormsby knew 
that Euphemia's domestic errands woukl probably 
bring her to the mill at this hour, and the bearing 
home of the bag of "seconds" was his precious 
devoir most ruthlessly usurped. "I only wish, my 
friend," thought the juggler, "that you had the 
heavy thing now with all its tender associations." 
He glanced with some solicitude at the delicate 
lovely face of the girl. It was j^lacidity itself. He 
had begun to be able to read it. There was an 
implication of exactions in its soft firmness. She 
would make no concessions. She would assume no 
blame not justly and fairly to be laid at her door. 
She would not rend her heart with those tender lies 
of false self -accusation common to loving women 
who find it less bitter to censure themselves than 
those they love, and sometimes indeed more politic. 
She would not bewail herself that she had not lin- 
gered, that Ormsby, who came daily to examine 
his fish-traps, might have had the opportunity of a 
long talk with her which he coveted, and the pre- 
cious privilege of going home like a mule with a 
flour -bag on his back. It was his own fault that 
he was too late. She could not heft the bag. If 
he were angry he was a fool. On eveiy principle 
it is a bad thing to be a fool. If God Almighty 
has not seen fit to make a man a fool, it is an ill 
turn for a man to make one of himself. 

As the juggler divined her mental processes and 
the possible indifference of her sentiments toward 



THE JUGGLER. 79 

the disappointed Ormsby, he realized that naught 
was to be hoped from her, but that probably 
Ormsby himself might be less obdui-ate. Doubt- 
less he had had experience of the stern and un- 
yielding quality of her convictions, and had learned 
that it was the part of wisdom to accommodate 
himself to them. Surely he would not indulge so 
futile an anger, for it would not move her. After 
an interval of solitary sulking in the dank cool 
woods his resentment would wane, his jealousy 
would prompt a more zealous rivalry, and he would 
come to her father's house as the evening wore on 
with an incidental expression of countenance and 
a lamblike manner. The juggler made haste be- 
cause of this sanguine expectation to leave the field 
clear for the reconciliation of the parties in inter- 
est. He deprecated the loss of one of the very 
few friends, among the many enemies, he had 
made since his advent into Etowah Cove. The 
frank, bold, kindly young mountaineer had, in the 
absence of all other prepossessions, somewhat won 
the good opinion of the juggler. With that attrac- 
tion which mere youth has for youth, he valued 
Ormsby above the other denizens of the Cove. 
Jane Ann Sims was possessed of more sterling 
worth as a friend than a battalion of such as 
Ormsby. But the juggler was a man of preju- 
dices. Mrs. Sims's unwieldy bulk offended his 
artistic views of proportion. The slow shuffle of 
her big feet on the floor as she went about irri- 
tated his nerves. The creases and dimples of her 



80 THE JUGGLER. 

broad countenance obscured for him its expression 
of native astuteness and genuine good will. There- 
fore, despite her appreciation of the true intent of 
the feats of a prestidigitator he was impatient of 
her presence and undervalued her hearty prepos- 
sessions in his favor. He heard with secret annoy- 
ance her voice vaguely wheezing a hymn, much off 
the key, as after supper she sat knitting a shape- 
less elephantine stocking beside the dying embers, 
for the night was chilly. Her husband now and 
again yawned loudly over his pipe, as much from 
perplexity as fatigue. Outside Euphemia was 
sitting alone on the step of the passage. The jug- 
gler had no inclination to linger by her side. Ex- 
cept for a lively appreciation of the difference in 
personal appearance she was not more attractive to 
him than was her mother. He ^ passed stiffly by, 
with a sense of getting out of harm's way, and as- 
cended to his room in the roof, where for a long 
time he lay in the floundering instabilities of the 
feather-bed, which gave him now and again a sen- 
sation as of drowning in soft impalpable depths, — 
a sensation especially revolting to his nerves. 
Nevertheless, it was but vaguely that he realized 
that Ormsby did not come, that he heard the move- 
ments downstairs as the doors were closed, and 
when he opened his eyes again it was morning, 
and the new day marked a change. 

If anything were needed to further his alienation 
from the beautiful daughter of the house, it might 
have been furnished by her own voice, the first 



THE JUGGLER. 81 

sounds of which that reached his ears were loud 
and somewhat unfilial. 

"It 's a plumb sin not ter milk a cow reg'lar ter 
the minit every day," she averred dictatorially. 

"Show me the chapter an' verse fur that, ef it 's 
a sin; ye air book-l'arned," wheezed her mother, 
on the defensive. 

"I ain't lookin' in the Bible fur cow-l'arnin'," 
retorted Euphemia. "There 's nuthin' in the 
Bible ter make a fool of saint or sinner." 

"Thar 's mo' cows spoke of in the Bible 'n ever 
you see," persisted Mrs. Sims, glad of the diver- 
sion. "Jacob hed thousands o' cattle, an' Aber- 
ham thousands, an' Laban thousands, not ter 
count Joseph's ten lean kine an' ten fat kine, 
what I reckon war never viewed out'n a dream, 
an' mought be accounted visions." 

"Waal, I ain't ez well pervided with cattle ez 
them folks, neither sleepin' nor wakin'," said Eu- 
phemia. "I 'lowed ye 'd milk pore Spot reg'lar 
like I does, else I wouldn't hev gone away." 

"I slep' till nigh supper-time," apologized Mrs. 
Sims unctuously, pricked in conscience at last, 
"else I 'd hev done it. Want me ter go walkin' 
in my sleejj, an' milk the cow?" 

Euphemia said no more, but there rose an ener- 
getic clashing of pans and kettles, intimating that 
the explanation had not mitigated the enormity of 
the offense. It was with a distinct sentiment of 
apprehension that the juggler made himself ready 
and descended the stairs. The place was evidently 



82 THE JUGGLER. 

under martial law. The slipshod, easy-going lib- 
erty which had characterized it was a thing of the 
past. He might hardly have recognized it, so 
different was the atmosphere, but for the fixtures. 
The perfumed air swept through and through the 
rooms that he had found so close, from open win- 
dow to open door. The floors had been scrubbed 
white, and were still but half dry. The breakfast- 
table was set in the passage, and the graceful vines 
which grew over the aperture at the rear showed 
the morning sunshine only in tiny interstices, as 
they waved back and forth with a fluctuating glim- 
mer and an undertone of rustlings and murmurs; 
through the drooping boughs of the elm at the 
opposite entrance might be caught glimpses of the 
silver river and the gray rocks and the purple 
mountains afar off. 

Here he found Euphemia and her parents. The 
irate flush was still red on the young girl's cheeks, 
and her eyes were bright with the stern elation of 
victory. But if submission entailed on Mrs. Sims 
no effort, she was not averse to subjugation. The 
juggler was pleased for once to perceive no dimi- 
nution in the number and depth of her dimples as 
she welcomed him. 

"Ye '11 hev ter put up with Phemie's cookin', 
now. I don't b'lieve in no old 'oman cookin' 
whenst she hev got a spry young darter ter do it 
fur her. I reckon ye '11 manage ter make out. 
She does toler'ble well fur her, bein' inexperienced 
an' sech; but I can't sense it into the gal how ter 



THE JUGGLER. 83 

git some sure enough strong rich taste on ter the 
vittles." 

Old Sims's grizzled, stubbly, unshaven counte- 
nance expressed a rigid neutrality, as if he in- 
tended to abide by this impartiality or perish in 
the attempt. His art had sufficed to keep him out 
of the engagement this morning, and his success 
had confirmed his resolution. 

It seemed afterward to the juggler that this 
meal saved his life. He ate as if he had not tasted 
food for a week. He partook of mountain trout 
broiled on the coals, and of "that most delicate 
cate " constructed of Indian meal and called the 
corn dodger. The jDotatoes were roasted in the 
ashes with their jackets on, and crumbled to pow- 
der at the touch of a fork. He drank cream in- 
stead of buttermilk, — it had been too much trou- 
ble for Mrs. Sims to skim the big pans when she 
could tilt the churn instead; and there was a kind 
of dry, crisj), crusty roll compounded of the sec- 
onds that he had brought to the house on his shoul- 
der yesterday, and which was eaten with honey 
and the honeycomb. He watched the river shim- 
mer between the green willows of the banks. He 
noted the white mists rise on the purple mountain 
sides, glitter prismatically in the sun, tenuously 
dissolve in fleecy fragments, and vanish in mid-air. 
The faint tinkle of a sheep-bell sounded, — pas- 
toral, peaceful ; he heard a thrush singing with so 
fresh, so matutinal a delight in its tones. 

"If this is the line of march," he said to him- 



84 THE JUGGLER. 

seK, as he maintained a decorous silence, for the 
state of the temper of the family was too precari- 
ous to admit of conversation, "I don't care how 
soon I fall into ranks." 

It is sujiposed by those who affect to know that 
the seat of the intellectual faculties is the cere- 
brum situated in the brain-pan. Still, science 
cannot deny that the stomach is a singularly intel- 
ligent organ. Through its processes alone the jug- 
gler perceived how well subjection becomes parents, 
especially a female parent addicted to the use of 
the frying-pan; realized Euphemia's strength of 
character, unusual in so young a person, and con- 
ceived a deep respect for her mental and industrial 
capacities. He appreciated an incongruity in his 
bantering style and his mocking high - sounding 
phrases. His manner toward her became char- 
acterized by a studious although apparently inci- 
dental courtesy, which was, however, compatible 
with a certain cautious avoidance. 

These days passed eventlessly to him. Much of 
the time he strolled listlessly about, so evidently 
immersed in some absorbing mental perturbation 
that Tubal Sims marveled that its indicia should 
not attract the attention of the womenfolk, who 
esteemed themselves so keen of discernment in 
such matters. He still affected to angle at times, 
but his hook was hardly less efficient when it dan- 
gled bare and farcical in the deep dark pool than 
when the forlorn minnow it pierced stirred an 
eddy in the shadowy depths. He did not seem 



TEE JUGGLER. 85 

annoyed by his non-success. Mrs. Sims's banter 
scarcely grated on his nerves or touched his pride. 
But indeed Mrs. Sims herself did not think ill of 
the unachieving ; somehow the aggressive capabil- 
ity of Euphemia made her lenient. If there were 
more people like Euphemia, Mrs. Sims might 
have felt in conscience bound to move on herself. 
As to the daughter, her little world hastily con- 
formed itself to its dictator, and she ruled it with 
an absolute sway. Triumphs of baking or butter- 
making ministered amply to her pride. Even the 
dumb creatures seemed ambitious to meet her ex- 
pectations and avoid her censure. The dogs, who 
had sat so thick around the hearthstone in her 
absence as to edge away the human household, and 
had so independently tracked mud over the floors, 
now never ventured nearer than the threshold ; yet 
there was much complimentary wagging of tails 
when she appeared on the porch. Sometimes the 
clatter of the treadle and the thumpmg of the bat- 
ten told that the great loom in the shed-room was 
astir. Sometimes the spinning-wheel whirred. 
Occasionally she was busily carding cotton, and 
again she was hackling flax. 

One afternoon he found her differently employed. 
She sat near the window and caught the waning 
light upon the newspaper which she held with both 
arms half outstretched as she read aloud. Mrs. 
Sims glanced up at the young man with a radiance 
of maternal pride that duplicated every crease and 
every dimple. Even Tubal Sims, who, as the 



86 THE JUGGLER. 

juggler had fancied of late, was wont to look at 
his guest askance, lifted his eyes now with a smile 
distending his gruff, lined countenance, as he sat 
with his arms folded in his shirt-sleeves across 
his breast, his chair tilted back on its hind legs 
against the frame of the opposite window, his gaze 
reverting immediately to the young elocutionist. 
With a good-natured impulse to minister to the 
satisfaction of the old couple, the juggler silently 
took a chair hard by, and suppressed his rising 
sense of ridicule. 

For, alack, Euphemia's accomplishments were 
indeed of manual achievement. He listened with 
surprise that this should be the extent of her 
vaunted book-learning, knowing naught of how 
scanty were her opportunities, and what labor this 
poor proficiency had cost. Subjugation is possible 
only to superior force. In the instant his former 
attitude of mind toward her had returned, on this 
pitiful exhibition of incapacity which she herself 
and her prideful parents were totally incompetent 
to realize. She droned on in a painful singsong, 
now floundering heavily among unaccustomed 
words, now spelling aloud one more difficult than 
the others, while he had much ado to keep the con- 
temptuous laugh from his face, aware that now 
and again his countenance was anxiously yet tri- 
umphantly perused by the delighted old people, to 
lose no token of his appreciation and wonder. 

To bear this scrutiny more successfully he sought 
to occupy his thoughts in other matters. His 



THE JUGGLER. ' 87 

practiced eye noted even at the distance that the 
newspaper must be some county sheet, — published 
perhaps in the town of Colbury, He congratu- 
lated himseK that the girl had evidently exhausted 
the columns of local news, and was now deep in 
the contents of what is known as the "patent out- 
side." Otherwise his polite martyrdom might 
have been of greater duration. He felt that nei- 
ther her interest nor that of her audience would 
long sustain her in the wider range of subjects and 
the more varied and unaccustomed vocabulary of 
the articles, copied from many sources, which made 
up this portion of the journal. 

The next moment he could have torn it from her 
hands. His heart gave a great bound and seemed 
to stand still. His eyes were fixed and shining. 
He half rose from his chair; then by an absolute 
effort resumed his seat and resolutely held himself 
still. In the throe of an inexpressible suspense 
every fibre of his being was stretched to its ex- 
tremest tension as, slowly, laboriously, pausing 
often, the drawling voice read on anent "Young 
Lucien Royce. Details of his Terrible Death." 
For so the head-lines ran. 



IV. 

The account which the newspaper made shift to 
give was but a bald, disjointed recital of the super- 
ficial aspect of events to one whose memory could 
so nearly reproduce the vivid fact; and where 
memory and experience failed him, his imagina- 
tion, conversant with the status depicted, could 
paint the scene with all the tints of actuality. A 
recent steamboat accident on the great Mississippi 
River had resulted in much loss of life. The words, 
as Euphemia droned them, still holding the news- 
paper with both arms outstretched, brought back 
to one of her listeners the sensation of forging 
tremulously along in midstream at nightfall, the 
shimmer of the shaking chandeliers of the great 
flimsy floating palace, the white interior of the 
ladies' cabin, with the "china finish" of the 
painted and paneled walls, its velvet carpet and 
furniture, its grand piano. He heard anew the 
throb of the engines, and the rush of water from 
the great revolving wheels; he had the sense, too, 
of the immensity of the vast river, gleaming with 
twinkling points of light close at hand, where the 
waves caught the glitter from the illuminated 
craft, and tossed it from one to another as the 
surges of the displaced water broke about the hull ; 



THE JUGGLER. 89 

furtlier away could be seen the swift current hur- 
rying* on, a different dusky tint from the darkness; 
and still further, where the limits of vision were 
reached, one had even yet some subtle realization 
of that unceasing irresistible flow, although unseen 
and unheard. He remembered leaning over the 
guards and idly watching a number of mules on 
the deck below, crowded so thickly that they 
seemed only a dark restlessly stirring mass, until 
at some landing", when they were excited by the 
clamors of the roustabouts loading on more cotton, 
the pallid glare of the electric light rendered dis- 
tinguishable the tossing snorting heads and wild 
dilated eyes. An ill-starred cargo! The frantic 
struggles of this animated mass caused much loss 
of human life ; many a bold swimmer might have 
gained the land but for the uncontrolled plunging 
of those heavy hoofs. And there was no lack of 
light to reveal the full horrors of the fate: those 
huge piles of bales of blazing cotton illumined the 
river for twenty miles. How unprescient, how 
strangely stolid, the human organism, the phleg- 
matic mind, the insensate soul, that no nerve, no 
faint tremor of fear or forecast, no vague presenti- 
ment, heralded the moment when every condition 
of life was reversed ! 

Up in the pilot-house he was now, with the cap- 
tain and the pilot an>d the great shadowy wheel. 
The ladies had all vanished, leaving the cabin be- 
low deserted and a trifle forlorn. Once he had 
taken his way through those sacred precincts, 



90 THE JUGGLER. 

affecting to be searching for some one ; and so he 
was, — to discover if any one there was worth 
looking at twice : and this he esteemed a justifiable 
if not a laudable enterprise, for were the ladies 
not welcome to look at him? His trim business 
suit he felt was quite the correct thing. He had 
entire confidence in his tailor, and he swore by 
his barber! His proper thankfulness to his Crea- 
tor, too, was not impaired • by any morbid seK- 
depreciation. With his strong, alert, handsome 
figure, his dark red-brown hair, his eyes of the 
same tint, only kindled into fire, his long dark 
lashes, his drooping mustache, and the features 
with which nature had taken some very particular 
pains, — the ladies were quite welcome not to turn 
their heads away, if they chose. 

However, his vanity was not insatiable. He 
had made his triumphal progress through the circle 
earlier in the evening, and now he was relishing 
the captain's surprised laughter at sundry feats 
that he was exhibiting with a silver dollar and 
a goblet which did not always hold water. One 
moment the silver dollar was under it, glimmer- 
ing affably through the thin glass; then, with 
no human approach to it, the goblet was emj)ty. 
It seemed the problem of life to the jolly captain 
to discover how this was done, and being an ambi- 
tious wight, he assured his passenger, with a wild 
wager of ten dollars to nothing, that, after the 
boat should leave the bank again, he would be able 
to do the trick himself before they could make 



THE JUGGLER. 91 

another landing. Before they made another land- 
ing he was initiated into deeper mysteries. 

The boat was heading slowly for the shore. 
For the whistle, in loud husky amplitudes of 
sound, overpowering when heard so close at hand, 
had broken abruptly on the air, and the echoes of 
all the wild moss-draped cypress woods on either 
hand were answering the accustomed sound through 
the dark aisles of the swamp. To many a far 
cabin up lonely bayous they carried the note of 
the progress of "de big boat up de ribber." The 
great tremulous craft was swinging majestically 
round in midstream. Now and again sounded the 
sharp jangling of the pilot's bell. Then the boat 
paused with a quivering shock, backed, veered to 
one side, approached the shore, paused again, and 
then smoothly glided forward, trembled anew, and 
was still. 

He had gone out on the hurricane deck. The 
wind blew fresh from the opposite shore ; he was 
sensible of a certain attraction in the aspect of 
the gloom which was as above a darkling sea, for 
the further bank was hardly visible by day, and 
utterly effaced by night. The stars were in the 
water as well as in the sky. He looked up at 
them above the two dusky columns of the boat's 
chimneys, which were be jeweled now with swing- 
ing lights. The sudden stillness of the machin- 
ery gave one to hear the sounds from the land. 
A crane clanged out a wild woodsy cry from 
somewhere in the darkness. An owl, hooting 



92 THE JUGGLER. 

from the bank, sent its voice of ill omen far along 
the currents of the great deep silent river. The 
clamor from the landing caught his attention, and 
he turned back to look down at the cluster of 
twinkling lights, — for the place was a mere ham- 
let. And but for the shifting of his attitude, — 
oh, could he but have contented his gaze with the 
sad spring night by the riverside, the lonely woods, 
the waste of waters, the reflection of the stars in 
the depths and the stars themselves in the infinite 
heights of the dark sky, — could this have sufficed, 
he said to himself as the girl read aloud the story 
of his fate, he might be living now. 

For alive as the man looked, he was dead ! 

And the end of Lucien Royce — for this was his 
real name — came to pass in this way. 

That night, as he shifted his position on the 
hurricane deck, a young fellow coming up the 
broad landing-stage amongst the neighborhood 
loafers bound to take a drink at the bar of every 
passing steamboat, caught sight of him in the 
steady pervasive radiance of the electric search- 
light now aflare on the boat, and lifted his voice 
in a friendly hail. This young fellow was very 
visible in the warm spring afternoon in the far- 
away mountains, where he had never been. The 
juggler inadvertently glanced down at the russet 
shoes on his feet, for this man had then stood in 
them. It was he who wore, that night, the long 
blue hose, the blue flannel shirt, the black-and-red 
blazer, the knickerbockers, and the tan-colored 



THE JUGGLER. 93 

belt, which was drawn an eyelet or so tighter now, 
for the juggler was slighter of build. Notified by 
the whistle of the boat of its approach, he had 
come down to the landing on his bicycle, merely 
for the break in the monotony of a long visit at a 
relative's plantation. Royce remembered how this 
other fellow had looked in this toggery, grown so 
familiar, as they stood together at the bar, and he 
asked of the newcomer more than once what he 
would take. Very jolly they were together at the 
bar. It was hard to part. Lucien Royce could 
scarcely resist the pressing insistence to return at 
an eai'ly day and visit this friend at his sister's 
place, a few miles back from the river, where he 
himself was a guest. But John Grayson was the 
prodigal son in an otherwise irreproachable family, 
and Royce preferred more responsible introduction 
to make his welcome good. With this hampering 
thought in mind he was not apt at excuses. John 
Grayson, noting that he was ill at ease, instantly 
attributed it to commercial anxiety, and asked, 
with rude curiosity, how his firm was weathering 
the flurry. For this was a time of extreme finan- 
cial stress. A general panic was in progress. 
Assignments were announced by the dozen daily. 
The banks were going down one upon another, 
like a row of falling bricks. With business much 
extended, with heavy margins to cover and notes 
for large amounts about to fall due, the cotton 
commission firm, Greenhalge, Gould & Fife, of 
St. Louis, of which his late father had been a 



94 THE JUGGLER. 

partner, and of which he was an employee, had 
made great efforts to collect all the money dne 
them in the lower country, and Lucien Royce had 
been sent south on this mission. He had suc- 
ceeded beyond their expectations. Owing to the 
prevalent total lack of confidence in the banks, 
he had been instructed to transmit a considerable 
sum by express. This, however, was promptly at- 
tached in the express office at St. Louis to satisfy 
a claim against the firm ; and although they were 
advised it could not be sustained in court, the 
proceeding greatly embarrassed them, being, in 
fact, designed at this crisis to force a compromise 
in order to release the surplus funds. To furnish 
security proved impossible under the circumstances ; 
and the firm being thus balked, Royce telegraphed 
in cipher to them for authority to bring the re- 
mainder home on his person, that it might be in 
readiness to take up their paper. Although he 
was rarely troubled by the weight of the money- 
belt which he thus wore, containing a large sum 
in bills and specie, he was very conscious of it now 
when Grayson, who with all the rest of St. Louis 
had heard of the attachment suit, abruptly de- 
manded, with a knitting of his brow, " How in the 
world do you get your collections to them, if you 
can't send the money by express or draft? " 

Royce controlled his face, and replied evasively, 
" Oh, the financial situation is on the mend now. 
As to the firm, it will pull through all right, with- 
out a doubt." 



THE JUGGLER. 95 

John Grayson listened, his auburn head cocked 
to one side. He winked a roguish dark eye. 
Then, with a sudden jocose hinge at his friend, he 
slipped his arm arovmd his waist, feeling there the 
heavy roll of the belt, and burst into rollicking 
laughter. The scuffling demonstration — for Royce 
had violently resisted — was eyed with stately dis- 
approval by an elderly planter of the old regime, 
who possessed now more manners than means; evi- 
dently contrasting the public "horse-play," as he 
doubtless considered it, of these representatives 
of the present day with the superior deportment of 
the youth of the punctilious past. 

Lucien Royce remembered that he had been 
secretly perturbed after this, for he knew that 
Grayson drank to excess and talked wildly in his 
cups ; and although, in view of his own safety, he 
would hardly have cared to make public the char- 
acter of his charge, he realized with positive dis- 
may that it might be fatal to the interests of the 
firm should he encounter some legal process at the 
wharf in St. Louis, the result of this discovery. 

But he was simple-hearted, after all. He did 
not suspect John Grayson of aught dishonorable. 
To the world at large he seemed a fine young 
fellow, of excellent forbears, merely sowing his 
wild oats, — a crop which many men have har- 
vested in early years with scant profit, it is true, 
but without derogation to common honesty and 
repute. 

Royce subsequently sought to urge in compas- 



96 THE JUGGLER. 

sion for his friend that the turpitude of the crime 
was insomuch the less that it was not deliberate 
and premeditated. Certain it was that Grayson's 
cry of amazement and his plunge toward the guards 
were very like the precipitancy of dismay when he 
found that the huge boat was sheering off; she 
was turning as he dashed down the stair, and was 
headed once more on her course when he realized 
that in their conviviality he and his friend had 
failed to hear the sonorous panting of the engines 
again astir, the jangling of the bell, the heavy 
plashing of the buckets striking the water as the 
wheels revolved anew, and that the landing was 
now a mile down the river. 

The captain showed much polite concern when 
the two young men resorted hastily to the "texas " 
and found him seated at a table, eying, with an 
air of great cunning and a robust intention to solve 
the mystery forthwith, a silver dollar which was 
securely invested under an inverted glass goblet, 
and which, so far as his powers were capable of 
extricating it thence, save by the rule of thumb, 
as it were, was the safest silver dollar ever known. 

He desisted from this occupation for the moment 
to master the new perplexity that confronted him, 
and to express his most affable and ceremonious 
regret; for his boat carried all the cotton shipped 
from the rich sister's plantation, and the dictates of 
policy aided his constitutionally kindly disposition. 

"Why, I wouldn't have kidnapped you this way 
for" — his eye fell on the bit of silver shining 



THE JUGGLER. 97 

through the goblet — • "for a dollar," he concluded 
modestly. "I'll put you ashore in the yawl, if 
you like. I would turn down-stream and land 
again, but" — he faced half round from the table, 
with the lightness characteristic of some portly 
men, and sat with one hand on the back of the 
chair, and the other on the goblet — " but the 
truth is I 'm running pretty much on one wheel; 
there was an accident to the other before we were 
a hundred miles from New Orleans, and with this 
wind blowing straight across the river it 's mighty 
difficult getting out from the left bank; she can 
hardly climb against the current." 

John Grayson appeared for a moment to con- 
template the suggestion of going ashore in the 
yawl. The wind came in a great gust through the 
towering chimneys, the lights flickered, the texas 
seemed to rock upon the superstructure of the hur- 
ricane deck. "I don't believe I care to be on the 
river in a yawl in this wind, this dark night," 
he said, evidently debating the matter within him- 
self. 

"Then go to St. Louis and back with us!" ex- 
claimed the hospitable captain. "Shan't cost you 
a cent, of course. We '11 make our next landing 
a little after midnight, I reckon, and I '11 telegraph 
Mrs. Halliday from there." 

The jovial evening seemed to the juggler, as he 
listened to the girl reading aloud, and stared at 
her with eyes blank of expression and that intro- 
verted look which follows mental processes rather 



98 THE JUGGLER. 

than material objects, like an experience in another 
planet, so far away it was, as if so long ago. He 
remembered that he scarcely dared to touch a glass, 
with the consciousness of the treasure he carried 
in the belt he wore and all its interdependent in- 
terests, but John Grayson drank blithely enough, 
and the generous liquor relaxed beyond all prece- 
dent his loosely hinged tongue. Lucien Royce 
kept close by his side as he wandered about the 
boat, having developed a fear that he would tell 
the secret that had come so unwarrantably into his 
possession; and when the captain asked as a favor 
that, on account of the crowded condition of the 
boat, Koyce would share his stateroom with the 
guest, he acceded at once, preferring to have Gray- 
son able to talk only to him until such time as he 
should be once more duly sober. 

He consigned the guest to the upper berth, 
thinking that thus Grayson could not leave the 
stateroom without his knowledge. He lay awake 
by a great effort until he was sure from the snores 
of his jovial friend that Grayson was asleep; and 
when he dropped into slumber himself, as he was 
young and tired, having been much in the open 
air that day, to which he was unaccustomed in his 
clerical vocation, he slept like a log. 

His consciousness was renewed, after a blank 
interval, with the sense of being awakened in his 
berth by a violent jar, and of striving to rouse 
himself, and of falling asleep again. Another in- 
terval of blankness, and he remembered definitely 



THE JUGGLER. 99 

the grasp of John Grayson's hand on his shoulder, 
roughly shaking him, with the terrified announce- 
ment that there was something the matter. He 
experienced a sort of surprise that John Grayson 
was in the stateroom ; then — it was strange that 
his mind should have thus taken cognizance of 
trifles — he recalled the crowded condition of the 
boat, and realized that his friend was leaping 
down from the upper berth. He stated, with 
drowsy dignity, that he did not care a damn what 
was the matter; that he had paid for his state- 
room, which was more than some people could say, 
and that if he were not allowed to sleep in it, he 
would give bond that he would know the reason 
why. 

The next thing of which he was aware was a 
flash of light in the room. The door had opened 
from the saloon, and a clerk had put in his head 
to say that there was no danger. The boat had 
struck a snag, it was true, but the damage was 
slight. Somehow Royce slept but lightly after 
this. The unreasoning sense of impending misfor- 
tune had come to him at last. Presently he was 
awake and conscious that he was alone. He lifted 
himself on his elbow and listened. What was that 
low roar? The wind? That sound of banging 
timbers must be the flapping of shutters or doors 
as the gust rushed across the river. He heard a 
clamor on the boiler deck. Voices? — or was it 
the wind, screaming wildly as it went? And why 
did they rim the engines at that furious rate ? He 



100 THE JUGGLER. 

could feel the strain of the machinery in the very 
floor under his feet. 

As he slipped out of the lower berth he per- 
ceived that the gray dawn was in the contracted 
little room ; he could see through the glass of the 
door opening on the guards the tawny-tinted 
stretches of water, the sad-hued cypress woods on 
a distant bank, draped with fog as well as with 
hanging moss, and down the stream the whiter 
tints of an island of sand covered with sparse vege- 
tation, locally known as a "tow-head," for which 
the disabled boat was running with every pound 
of pressure which the engines could carry. There 
was, in truth, something the matter, for the tow- 
head would have been given a wide berth in a nor- 
mal state of affairs; getting aground, when the 
lesser of two evils, showed a crisis indeed. 

He looked about hastily for his clothes. They 
were gone, and in their place John Grayson's tog- 
gery lay in a heap. In his panic and the darkness 
Grayson had probably caught the garments nearest 
to his hand. His deserted friend hastily invested 
himself in the suit of clothes that John Grayson 
had left. As he was drawing on the blazer, sud- 
denly a hoarse cry smote his ear. "No bottom! " 
sang out the leadsman. They were taking sound- 
ings. "No-o bottom!" And he felt the vibra- 
tions of the tone in the very fibres of his quaking 
heart. 

He plunged out at the door on the guards, and 
as he stood there gasping for a moment he realized 



THE JUGGLER. 101 

the situation. The boat was sinking fast; evi- 
dently in striking a snag the craft had sprung a 
leak. He saw on the deck the frightened passen- 
gers huddled together in groups, here and there 
a man anxiously fastening life-preservers on the 
women and children of his kindred. Again the 
leadsman's cry, "No-o bottom!" floated mourn- 
fully over the water, and the frantic panting of 
the engines seemed redoubled. He saw the cap- 
tain, cool and collected, at his post; the other offi- 
cers appeared now and again among the groups 
of passengers, soothing, reassuring, and doubtless 
their lies were condoned for the mercy of the in- 
tention. As he passed on amongst them all, no- 
where did he catch a glimpse of John Grayson. 
"If I didn't know the fellow wouldn't play such 
a fool trick at such a time, I 'd think he was dodg- 
ing me," he muttered. The next moment he had 
forgotten him utterly.' 

"Deep four! " called the leadsman. 

As Royce listened he stood still, holding his 
breath in suspense. 

"Mark three!" called the leadsman, sounding 
again. 

Royce heard the jDlunging of his heart as dis- 
tinctly as the echoes of the cry clanging from the 
shore. But suddenly they were blended with a 
new refrain, — "A quarter twain! " 

He gave a great sigh of relief, and checked it 
midway to listen anew. 

"Mark twain!" called the leadsman, with a 
new intonation. 



102 THE JUGGLER. 

There was no longer doubt, — they were m shal- 
low water. A great exclamation of delight rose 
from the crowd. The very hope was like a rescue, 
— the relief from the blank despair! Here and 
there the hysterical sobbings of the women told of 
the slackening of the tension of suspense. 

"Quarter less twain!" cried the leadsman, 
sounding anew. 

The juggler remembered how free he had felt, 
how safe. The boat, even if her engines could not 
run her aground, would soon settle in shallow 
water, and rescue would come with some passing 
steamer. 

A blinding glare, a thunderous detonation that 
seemed to shatter his every nerve, and he was wel- 
tering in the river ; now sinking down with a sense 
of the weight of infinite fathoms of water upon 
him, and now mechanically trying to strike out 
with an unreasoning instinct like an animal's. 
When he could understand what had hapjjened he 
was swimming fairly well, although greatly ham- 
pered by the clinging blazer that John Grayson 
had left on the floor, and which he now wore. 
The long reaches of the river, the shore, the dim 
dawn, were all lighted with a lurid glare; for the 
boat had taken fire with the explosion of the over- 
strained boiler. The roar of the flames mingled 
with the heart-rending screams of those whom 
hope had so cruelly deluded. But the sounds were 
all faint at the distance, and he never could under- 
stand how he had been thrown, unhurt, so far 



. THE JUGGLER. 103 

away. He saw none of the human victims of the 
disaster. Now and again charred timbers, shoot- 
ing by on the current, threatened him, and to avoid 
them necessitated some skillful management. A 
far greater danger was the proximity of two 
horses, also gallantly swimming, who followed him 
with loud whinnies of inquiry and distress, appeal- 
ing in their way for aid and guidance, leaning on 
the humankind as if recognizing his superior ca- 
pacity. More than once, one of them, a spirited 
mare, intended for new triumphs at the Louisville 
races, swam close in front of him, pausing, as if 
to say, "Mount, and let us gallop off on dry 
ground;" deflecting his course, which was already 
beset with abnormal difficulties. For when almost 
exhausted, he saw that the land he was approach- 
ing, half veiled with the gray fog, was a bluff 
bank, thirty feet high at least, and as far as eye 
could reach up and down the river there was no 
lower ground. To scale it was impossible. His 
heart sank within him. He felt that his stroke 
was the feebler when hope no longer nerved it. In 
his despair he could hardly make another effort. 
And although he had feared the horses, with their 
lashing hoofs and their unearthly cries, when the 
mare — the more importunate in dumb insistence 
that he would succor them — threw up her head, 
and with a wild inarticulate scream went struggling 
down into the depths to rise no more, he felt a 
choking sob in his throat, his eyes were blurred, 
he could scarcely keep his head above the surface. 



104 THE JUGGLER. 

If he were further conscious, the faculty was not 
coupled with that of memory, for he never knew 
how he came to be in a flatboat floating swiftly 
down the stream from the scene of the disaster, 
and he never saw his other comrade again. Once 
more there came an interval void of perception; 
then he was vaguely aware that the flatboat was 
tied up in the bight of a bend; the shadowy cy- 
presses towered above it, — he heard their wav- 
ing boughs, — the water lapped gently about it ; 
then blankness again, and he never knew how 
long this continued. 

One morning he awoke, restored to his senses, 
in a bvmk against the wall ; he felt the motion of 
the river, and he knew that the flimsy craft with 
the rickety little cabin in its centre was again 
afloat upon the stream. Every pulse of the cur- 
rent set his own pulses a-quiver. The very prox- 
imity of the fearful river induced a physical terror 
that his mind could not control. It was only by 
a mighty wrench that his thoughts could be forced 
from the subject, and fixed as an alternative on 
his surroundings. The interior of the cabin con- 
sisted of two apartments : one for bunks and cook- 
ing purposes; the other, apparently, from the 
glimpse through a door, fitted up as a store, with 
small wares, such as threads and perfumery, soaps 
and canned goods, and showy imitation jewelry 
calculated to take the eye and the earnings of the 
negroes at the various landings where the craft, 
locally called the " trading-boat, " tied up. Through 



THE JUGGLER. 105 

a further door he had an outlook upon the deck. 
An elderly woman with rough red arms was sitting 
there on a stool, peeling potatoes; a half -grown 
boy, cross-legged on the floor, tailor-wise, was 
sawing away on an old fiddle. Beyond still was 
the vast spread of the tawny-tinted rippling floods 
and the sad hues of the nearer shore. Lucien 
Royce recoiled at the very sight and turned away 
his eyes. Within, much of the wearing apparel 
of the proprietors dangled from the rafters. There 
were bunks on the opposite wall, imperfectly visi- 
ble through the smoke from the tiny stove, which, 
despite a great crackling of driftwood, seemed to 
labor with an imperfect draft. Two men were 
seated close to it, and were talking with that secu- 
rity which presumes no alien ear to listen. A cer- 
tain crime of robbery absorbed their interest, and 
Royce gathered that, fearing they might be impli- 
cated in it, they had silently fled from the locality 
before their presence was well recognized. They 
had evidently had naught to do with it. They 
only wished they had! 

A great swag it was, to be sure. The man had 
worn a money-belt, — a rare thing in these times. 
Heavy it must have been and drawn tight, for 
both hands had stiffened on its fastenings as if 
striving to tear it off. Its weight had doubtless 
drowned him. It was no joke to swim the Missis- 
sippi at high water, completely dressed and with 
a tight belt stuffed with money — gold or silver ? 
And how much could the sum have been ? When- 



106 THE JUGGLER. 

ever this point was broached, a glitter of greed 
was in the eyes of each which made the grizzled- 
bearded faces alike despite the variations of con- 
tour and feature. Always a long pause of silent 
sjDeculation ensued, and whenever the suppositi- 
tious sum total was mentioned, it had augmented 
in the interval. No one knew where the man 
went down ; the body — the face beaten and 
bruised by floating timbers out of all semblance to 
humanity — had been swept upon a sand-bar. 
There some pirates of the river-bank had found it, 
had cut the belt open, had taken the money and 
fled, leaving the empty belt to tell its own futile 
story. At this point the flatboatmen would pause, 
and once more gloomily shake their heads and spit 
tobacco juice on the tiny stove, till it was as vocal 
as a frying-pan, and obviously wish that the chance 
had been theirs. 

Thus it was that Lucien Royce had been ap- 
prised of John Grayson's death and of the loss 
of the funds with which he himself had been en- 
trusted. Until this moment he had never missed 
the belt. Doubtless Grayson took it from him 
at the first alarm of striking the snag before the 
dawn, when he vainly sought to rouse his friend 
to a sense of danger. Was it possible, he mar- 
veled, that Grayson, leaving him to drown, as he 
supposed, had thought that the good money need 
not be wasted? Had its custodian been rescued, 
however, probably Grayson would have restored 
it ; otherwise suspicion Avould have fallen upon him, 



THE JUGGLER. 107 

since they had occupied the same stateroom. But 
if not, if Lucien Royce's body had gone to the 
bottom of the river, and no one the wiser that 
the money -belt did not go with it, — was it upon 
this chance, in that supreme moment of terror, 
that Grayson had had the forethought to act? 
He was not a man who made much account of 
the rights of others when his own comfort or 
his own pleasure was at stake. But his life — 
did he risk the precious moment that might mean 
existence to save a sum of money for a St. Louis 
cotton commission firm of which he did not know 
a single member? Would he have jeopardized 
his chances in the water with this weight, with 
this fatally close -gripping python of a belt, for a 
mere commercial matter ? It was needless to argue 
the question. Royce knew right well, both then 
and now, that in no event, had he not survived, 
did Grayson intend to restore the money. Evi- 
dently the idea had flashed upon him when, in 
seeking to rouse his companion, his hands came in 
contact with the belt and the opportunity was his 
own. And so Grayson had gone to his death, 
drowned by the weight and the pressure of the 
stolen money. It seemed a grim sort of justice 
that with the last movements of his hands in life, 
the last effort of his will, he sought to tear it off, 
to cast it from him, as he went down into the hope- 
less depths. 

Royce experienced hardly a regret for his false 
friend, — not more than a physical pang of sym- 



108 THE JUGGLER. 

pathy, an involuntary shudder, his very nerves in- 
stinct with the terror of the water. Had Grayson 
not tampered with a secret that was not his own, 
the belt would now be safe. Koyce himself had 
had the strength to sustain its weight in the water. 
He was used to it, and its size had been carefully 
adjusted to his slender figure. Now the money was 
gone, — the belt was found on another man. They 
would seem to have been confederates in the rob- 
bery of the fund. He was responsible for it. He 
could not reasonably account for its being out of 
his own possession without incriminating himself. 
Should he seek to inculpate the dead man alone, 
he was aware that the fact that Grayson could not 
speak for himself would speak for him. Nothing 
could palliate the circumstance that the belt was 
found on another man than its proper custodian, 
and that the leather had been slit and the money 
extracted. He would have to account for this, and 
improbable excuses would not go far with men 
smarting under a ruinous loss from the careless- 
ness or the drunkenness or the cupidity of their 
employee. He could not go back. He could 
never face the firm ! 

So light of heart he had always been, so light 
of heel, so light, so very light of head, that the 
anguish which pierced him at the idea of the loss 
of public esteem, of his commercial honor, of the 
confidence of the firm, involved in his seeming 
failure of probity, subacutely amazed him at its 
keen poignancy. He had hardly known how he 



THE JUGGLER. 109 

valued these spiritual, immaterial assets. More 
than life, — far, far more than life ! He began to 
contemn the struggle he had made in the water; 
he had been wondering and calculating, with an 
early gleam of consciousness and an athlete's stal- 
wart vanity, how far he had swum, how long he 
had sustained himself in the great flood ; for what 
purpose, he thought now, what melancholy pur- 
pose, to save his life for the ignominy of an epi- 
sode behind the bars for breach of trust, embezzle- 
ment, robbery — he hardly cared what might be 
the technical rank of the crime of which he would 
so certainly be accused. Every reflection brought 
confirmations of the popular suspicion which would 
be so false, and which could not, alas, be disproved. 
With a mechanical review, as of a life when it is 
closed, sundry gambling escapades of John Gray- 
son's recurred to his mind, in which he had been 
nearly concerned and which had attained a certain 
degree of notoriety. On one occasion, indeed, 
when he was younger and more easily led by his 
friend, a gambling establishment had been raided 
by the police, the two had been among the captured 
players, and being arraigned, although under false 
names, were nevertheless recognized. The exploit 
was so well bruited abroad that the senior member 
of the firm, who had been a friend as well as a 
partner of his father's, had given him what the 
old gentleman was pleased to term a "remon- 
strance," and what he himself denominated a 
"blistering." "Mark my words," had been its 



110 THE JUGGLER. 

conclusion, "that fellow Grayson will ruin you." 
Was it possible that this prophet of evil would 
fail to note the fulfillment of the prognostication ? 
Would this event give no color to the supposition 
that he had been gambling with the money, that 
Grayson had won it, and then was drowned and 
robbed ? 

Oh, why, why had he so struggled to save his 
wretched life ? The terrors of the water no longer 
shook his nerves. As he noted the trembling of 
the little craft, — the flimsiest thing, he thought, 
that he had ever seen afloat, — he said to himself 
that it would be the luckiest chance that had ever 
befallen him should the flatboat suddenly disinte- 
grate, timber from timber, on the swelling centre 
of the tide, engulfing him never to rise again. "I 
would not move a hand to save my life. I wish I 
were dead," he said, his white face turned to the 
wall. "I wish I were dead." And then he real- 
ized that he had his wish. He was dead. 

For the flatboatmen were talking again, with a 
morbid revolving around the subject. From their 
disjointed dialogue it appeared that the "stiff" 
was not on the sand-bar now ; it had been removed 
in obedience to a telegram from a firm in St. Louis, 
— Greenhalge, Gould & Fife, cotton commission 
merchants. One of their clerks had come down 
by train on the other side of the river, "nigh tore 
up " about the belt and the loss of the money. 
He recognized the dead man by his clothes, and 
the color of his hair and eyes, — "there was no 



THE JUGGLER. Ill 

other way to know him, he was such a s'prisin' 
bruisecl-up sight." This clerk had once given the 
man a meerschaum pipe that was in the breast- 
pocket yet, and some papers were dried off, and 
read and identified. He was shipped by train. 
They would bury him where he came from. The 
firm and its employees would turn out, probably, 
and do the handsome thing. "Good for trade, I 
reckon," remarked the proprietor of the flatboat 
store, with an appreciation of sentiment as an 
agent of profit. 

"What's the man's name?" demanded the 
other. 

"He never left no name as I heard. He loafed 
round Kyarter's sto' over thar in the bend awhile, 
an' a nigger rowed him over in a dug-oiit to see 
the stifP, an' he give his orders an' put out fur the 
up-country quick." 

"I ain't talkin' 'bout him. I mean the stiff. 
What was the stiff's name?" 

" Oh, Royce. Lucien Royce, — that 's the stiff's 
name. Lucien Leonard Royce." 

And thus it was that the juggler realized that 
he was dead. 

He made haste to leave the trading-boat as soon 
as he could stand, however unsteadily, on his feet. 
And the boatmen were not ill pleased to see him 
go. The humane search for all survivors of the 
wreck and the rescue of the bodies had been in 
progress for some days, but with a vague terror of 
implication in crime which must indeed be appall- 



112 THE JUGGLER. 

ing to the poor, who believe that justice is meted 
out according to the price the victim can pay for 
it, the fiatboatmen were drifting night and day 
further and further away from the dreaded local- 
ity. When they had chanced to meet the skiffs 
sent out by the search-parties for victims of the 
disaster, they had said naught of the man whom 
they had rescued, who lay between life and death 
in the bunk. They had even relinquished the op- 
portunity of "scrapping" about the waters for 
floating articles, of scant valiie in themselves, 
hardly worth the gathering of them together by 
the owners, but j^recious indeed to those of so re- 
stricted opportunities, — tins of edibles, cutlery, 
bedding, cooking utensils, bits of furniture, table- 
ware, garments, and the like. Once a stranger 
had boarded the craft, but he came no further 
than the door of the store, where he was furnished 
with a flask of whiskey needed for a half -drowned 
man lying hard by on a sand-bar. So when their 
guest was at last on his feet again they bade him 
farewell with a right good will, and the trifle of 
change that was in the pocket of poor John Gray- 
son's knickerbockers was a superfluity to their 
satisfaction. 

They set Royce ashore one night at a point 
which they stated was half a mile from the rail- 
road; it seemed a league or more through the 
dense oak forests, clear of undergrowth, level as 
a park, before he sighted a red lantern and an 
empty box car on a siding near a great tank. 



THE JUGGLER. 113 

There was apparently not another soul in the 
world, so unutterably lonely was the spot. He 
clambered into the car, knowing that he could not 
well play the role of tramp on any discerning 
train-man while wearing Grayson's expensive rus- 
set shoes, albeit somewhat the worse for water, 
and his natty knickerbockers and blazer. He 
would invent some story and beg a ride. He 
lay down behind a pile of bagging, and when he 
awoke he saw that the car was moving rapidly, 
that it was haif full of freight, that an afternoon 
sun was streaming in dusty bars through the 
chinks in the door, that he must have traversed 
many a mile of the inland country from the scene 
of the disaster; so many miles that, the next 
morning, when the car was opened in the yard of 
the freight depot of a small town, the whole land- 
scape was as strange to him as if he had entered 
a new world. Great purple mountains, wooded 
to their crests, encircled the horizon, itself seem- 
ing lifted to a great height, in contrast with the 
low-lying skies of the swamp country; and now 
and again, where the summit-lines were broken 
by gaps, further visions of enchanted heights in 
ethereal tints of blue and alluring sun-flooded 
slopes met his gaze. There was a river, too, nar- 
row, smoothly flowing, but cliff-bound, crystal- 
clear in a rocky channel that curved between the 
mountains it reflected. The sunshine was so daz- 
zling that he made scant shift to see the men, who, 
in moving the freight, discovered him. The first 



114 THE JUGGLER. 

demonstration of the yardmaster was wratMul 
bluster because of the impudent device of the sup- 
posed tramp and his success in stealing a ride. 
But as Lucien Royce rose to his feet, and his cos- 
tume that of a young gentleman of bucolic proclivi- 
ties taking his ease and dispensing with ceremony, 
became visible, he was received with banter and 
laughter. He was presumed to be engaged in 
some kind of adolescent escapade, — stealing a 
ride for a wager, perhaps ; and as, with his quick 
intelligence, he perceived this fact, he answered 
in the same vein. He leaped out of the car, made 
his way from the yard and up the main street of 
the town, and when, reaching its opposite extrem- 
ity, he was out in the country, he walked as if for 
his life. All day long he trudged at the top of 
his speed. Pedestrianism had been one of his 
many fads, and he wished more than once for his 
pedometer, that he might have his score to boast 
of and break the record of the pedestrian club 
of which he was an active member; and then he 
would check himself suddenly, remembering that 
it was decreed that he should never see his old 
comrades again. He was dead! His safety imper- 
atively required that he should remain dead. 

Apparently he left the sunshine behind him; 
the wind flagged and fell back; only certain clouds 
maintained an equal pace, congregating about the 
summits of the mountains, showing tier on tier 
above them, so darkly purple that sometimes he 
could hardly tell which was shadowy earth and 



THE JUGGLER. 115 

which over-shadowing sky. Always, as he clam- 
bered over the flank of some great ridge and 
looked upon the deep dells of the valley, these 
clouds were already crossing it, and rising, peak 
on peak and towering height over height, above 
the crest of the mountains stiU beyond. In one 
of these sequestered nooks among the vast ranges, 
when the swift lightnings were unleashed and the 
thunder reverberated from dome to dome and the 
weighty rain fell in tumultuous torrents, he dragged 
his stumbling feet to a lighted window dimly flick- 
ering in the gloom, and found the latch-string of 
Tubal Cain Sims's door on the outside, as the hos- 
pitable mistress of the cabin said it always should 
be, when she welcomed the wayfarer. 

And thus it came to pass that within a fortnight 
after the disaster the juggler sat listening to the 
miller's daughter as she read the account of the 
terrible death of young Lucien Royce. He could 
have given the journalist many points on the de- 
tails of the accident. But his mind ceased its 
retrospection, and he hearkened with keen interest, 
for one so very dead, to the narrative of the sup- 
plemental events occurring in the city of his home. 
As Euphemia droned drearily on, he gathered that 
the firm had made an assignment, the result of the 
loss of the funds of which Lucien Royce had been 
robbed, and their consequent inability to take up 
their paper. The amount was stated at thrice the 
reality, and his lips curved with a scornful won- 
der as to whether this was a commercial device 



116 THE JUGGLER. 

to render the failure more seemly and respectable, 
or was merely due to the magnifying proclivities 
natural to the race of reporters. "It lets the 
house down easier, — that's one good thing," he 
reflected. And then he checked himself, marvel- 
ing if other people who were dead could not imme- 
diately dissever their interests and affections from 
those subjects and associations that had once en- 
thralled them. "It must take a long time to get 
thoroughly acclimated to another world," he 
thought, realizing that the impulse of satisfaction 
which he had experienced because the "break" 
had its justification in the eyes of the commercial 
world was the loyal sentiment to the firm shared 
by every man on their pay-roll. "We could have 
weathered the flurry easily enough but for this," 
he knew the various employees were all severally 
saying to their personal friends and such of the 
general public as came within their opportunity. 
It seems that cynicism is not a growth exclusively 
native to this sphere, for he presently found him- 
self attributing to a wish to fix general attention 
on this subject of the loss of the money the firm's 
elaborate attention to the details of the obsequies 
of their unfortunate employee. But they would 
not overdo it, he realized even before Euphemia, 
hobbling painfully among words whose existence 
had hitherto been undreamed of by her, and 
whose structure would serve to render them ob- 
solete forever in her vocabulary after this single 
usage, had reached the description of the funeral 



THE JUGGLER. Ill 

arrangements. He had feared she would flag, and 
wovild thus balk his palpitating curiosity ; but the 
mournful pageantry of death has its fascination 
for certain temperaments, and it is fair to say she 
would not have read so long, nor would Tubal 
Sims and his wife have waking listened, had the 
theme been more cheerful. 

No, the firm would not overdo it. They were 
men of good taste and acumen. The public re- 
ceived sundry reminders that Lucien Royce's de- 
ceased father had been a member of the firm for 
many years, and much of the quondam prosperity 
had been due to his sagacity and sterling quali- 
ties. The young man's inherited interest in the 
business was of course swamped with the rest. 
And all this made the presence of each of the 
partners and of all the employees, together with 

large and showy floral tributes at St. Church, 

the more appropriate and natural. As no simple 
interment could have done, however, it had also 
riveted attention on that especial feature, the loss 
of the money, which was in itself calculated to 
excite much symjjathy and commiseration in the 
commercial heart, and to be of service in securing 
a composition with creditors and the possibility of 
continuance. 

"They needn't have been so mighty particular," 
he said to himself a moment afterward, his eyes 
bright and shining, the color in his cheeks. "I 
could have gotten up a big enough blow-out all by 
myself." 



118 THE JUGGLER. 

For that meed of popularity which many better 
men never achieve had been a gratuitous gift to 
Lucien Eoyce, who had never done aught to secure 
it or given it a thought in his life. His gay young 
friends were bereaved. All experiencing a sense 
of personal loss, all struck aghast with dismay and 
pity, those attended in a body who were of his 
many clubs and societies, and others singly if they 
happened to be merely friends outside the bonds 
of fraternities. The church was densely thronged; 
a wealth of flowers filled the chancel. The words 
of a popular hymn were sung by a member of the 
Echo Quartet, a singer of local renown, to an air 
composed by the late Lucien Royce, — so pathetic, 
with such sudden minor transitions, such dying 
falls (it had been a love-song, and he had written 
the words as well as the music), that the congrega- 
tion were in tears as they listened. 

"Ah ha, my fine first tenor!" the juggler said 
to himself in prideful triumph at the praise of 
print. "And how about that final phrase of each 
refrain that you persisted ought to resolve itself 
into the major, and not the minor chord? Oh, 
oh! Mightily pleased to stand up before a big 
crowd and sing it now, for all its faulty harmony ! " 

But if he had already been gratified, he was 
shortly delighted. The account digressed to the 
personal qualities of the deceased, his exceptional 
popularity, the high esteem in which he was held 
by his business associates, the great affection which 
his personal friends entertained for him, the ex- 



THE JUGGLER. 119 

traordinary versatility of his talents. He was a 
wonderful athlete for an amateur. (The juggler 
listened with a critical jealous ear to the detail of 
certain feats of lifting, walking, and swimming. 
"I can break that record now," he muttered.) He 
was a very acceptable amateur actor. He sang 
delightfully, and composed charming songs with 
words of considerable merit; in fact, he had a gift 
of light, easy versification. He was hospitable 
and joyous, and fond of entertaining his friends, 
to whom he was much attached, — the more as he 
was so alone in the world, having no near kindred 
since the death of his father. There was no bitter- 
ness in his mirth ; he laughed with you rather than 
at you. ("Don't be too sure of that," said the 
juggler, in his sleeve.) He was wonderfully quick 
in learning, even quick in acquiring any mechani- 
cal art that struck his attention. He had really 
become a skillful prestidigitator (how the juggler 
blessed the six-pronged unpronounceable word as 
Euphemia struggled to take hold of it, and finally 
left it as incomprehensible!): and this came about 
partly through his extraordinary quickness, and 
partly because no one could resist his fascinating 
bonhomie^ and many a traveling artist in legerde- 
main had imparted his professional secrets to him 
from sheer good will and liking. He was the 
same to all classes; he had an easy capacity for 
adapting himself to the company he was in for 
the time being, as if it were his choice. Many a 
pleasant haunt of his friends would lack its relish 



120 THE JUGGLER. 

after this, and it would be long before tlie name 
or face of Lucien Royce would be forgotten in St. 
Louis city. 

"Well," mused the juggler, with a sigh, as the 
reading concluded, "it's worth dying once in a 
while, to get a send-off like that." 

"Pore young man!" ejaculated Mrs. Sims, 
looking up with a sigh too, the relief from the 
long tension, her big creased solemn face bereft of 
every dimple. 

The juggler caught himself hastily. " The paper 
does n't say what Sabbath-school he was a member 
of," he observed, with mock seriousness. 

"That 's a fac'," returned Euphemia, unfolding 
the upper part of the journal to reperuse with a 
searching eye the portion relating to biographical 
detail. After an interval of vain scrutiny she re- 
marked, "Nor it don't say nuther whether he war 
a member o' the Hard-Shell Baptis' or Missionary 
or Methody." 

"He mought be a sinner, an' the paper don't 
like ter say it, him bein' dead," wheezed Mrs. 
Sims lugubriously, intuitively seizing upon a salient 
point of polite modern journalism. The anxious 
speculation in her fat overclouded countenance was 
painful to see, for Mrs. Sims believed in a mate- 
rial hell with a plenitude of brimstone and blue 
blazes. 

"I dare say he was a sinner!" exclaimed the 
juggler, with his manner of half -mocking banter. 
"Poor Lucien Royce! " 



'the juggler. 121 

Only late that night, when all the house was 
still, and darkness was among the sombre moun- 
tains, and the absolute negation of vision seemed 
to nullify all the world, did his mood change. He 
lay staring with unseeing eyes into the void gloom 
about him, yet beholding with a faculty more po- 
tent than sight the decorated chancel, the clergy- 
man in his surplice, the crowds of sympathetic 
faces, the casket with the funeral wreaths covering 
it, — the hideous mockery that it all was, the ter- 
rible hoax! 



V. 

The juggler was hardly disposed to felicitate 
himself upon this feat of simulation which had 
served to deceive the whole of his native city, and 
to bury a stranger, as it were, in his own grave. 
He began to pity the plight of the dead if they 
could so yearningly remember the life they had 
left. Return for him was impossible. Glimpses 
of the moon might shadow forth spirits revenant, 
but for him memory only must serve. He won- 
dered that he could not accept conclusions so evi- 
dently final, for over and again, in the deep 
watches of the night, he would argue anew within 
himself the chances pro and C07i of transforming 
these immutable fictions into fact, of overcoming 
the appearance of crime by his previous high char- 
acter, of relying on the good feeling of the firm, 
and the futility of the proceeding, to save him 
from prosecution. Then always, when he would 
reach this point, and his heart would begin to beat 
fast with the hope of restoration to life, it would 
stand still with a sudden paralysis and sink like 
lead; for there were interests other than those of 
revenge or justice, or preserving the public morals 
by enforcing j)enalties for the infringement of the 
law to be served by his incarceration in a good 
strong safe prison. There existed a certain cor- 



THE JUGGLER. 123 

poration, the Gerault Bonley Marble Company, 
that he knew would give much money to be able 
to lay hands upon him now, and that had doubt- 
less grieved for his demise like unto Rachel mourn- 
ing for her children. The Gerault Bonley Marble 
Comjjany had, m the past few years, been greatly 
enriched by the discovery of beds of a very fine mar- 
ble in a large body of Tennessee land, in which, 
however, they merely held an estate per autre vie, — 
limited to the duration of Lucien Royce's natural 
existence. In this unique position of a cestui que 
vie he had at first felt a certain glow of pride. It 
was characteristic of his knack of achieving impor- 
tance and prominence with so slight effort that he 
seemed, as it were, born to a certain preeminence. 
He recollected the prestige it added to his person- 
ality at the time when it was discovered that there 
were great beds of marble in the almost worthless 
tract, and the sensation of pleased notoriety he 
had experienced when Mr. Gerault Bonley, the 
president of the company, a well-known broker, 
had dropped in at the office to look at him — he 
had never taken the trouble before — and have a 
word with him. "Remember your business is to 
live, young man," he had said in leaving, flushed 
and elated with success. "That 's all you have to 
do. And if you ever find any hitch about doing 
it pleasantly, come to us, and we Will help you eke 
it out. You are the one who lives, you under- 
stand." And he walked out, portly and rubicund, 
his eye kindling as he went. 



124 THE JUGGLER. 

Lucien Royce had ridden up town on the cable 
car one evening, a day or two afterward, and he 
had noticed with new interest a man, forlorn, 
shabby, chewing the end of a five-cent cigar so 
hard between his teeth as he talked that he was 
unaware that its light had died out, who railed at 
life and his luck in unmeasured terms that aston- 
ished the passengers precariously perched on the 
platform of the rear car. This was the unsuccess- 
ful speculator who, some years earlier, had sought 
to mortgage the land in question to Mr. Gerault 
Bonley, the broker, who had bought up his paper 
and was disposed toward thumbscrews. It was 
not a good day for mortgages, somehow, but, with 
the desperation of a man already pressed to the 
wall, about as badly broken as he was likely to be, 
the debtor would not consent to an absolute trans- 
fer of the title. 

"The land will be sold under execution, then," 
he of the thumbscrews had said. 

"The law allows two years for redemption, in 
Tennessee," the owner had retorted, with the ex- 
pectation of better times in his face. 

Perhaps because of the resistance, — the broker 
always said he did not know why he had wanted 
the land, for although he was aware that a little 
marble quarry had once been worked there, it had 
been abandoned as not worth the labor, — still 
protesting that he could not avail himself of the 
property unless for a term of years, at least, he 
finally offered the bait of enough ready money to 



THE JUGGLER. 125 

extricate the speculator, and give him another 
show amongst the bulls and bears, and the convey- 
ance was made for the uncertain term of the life 
of another. Lucien Royce had chanced to drop 
in on some busmess for Greenhalge, Gould & 
Fife, the cotton commission firm, a lithe, muscular 
young fellow, the ideal of an athlete, and the 
thought suggested itself to the broker that the 
estate should be limited to the duration of his life. 
The proposition was carelessly acceded to by the 
young man, attracted for the moment by the nov- 
elty of the proceeding, apprehending in the matter 
the merest formality. This was the conclusion. 

"And now you '11 live forever!" cried the dis- 
appointed speculator, suddenly recognizing, in the 
uncertain light on the platform of the car, the 
features of the stalwart cestui que vie. Once more 
he was chewing hard on his cigar, once more in- 
veighing against his accursed luck, as he stretched 
the newspaper toward the dull lamp of the car, in- 
dicating with a trembling hand the big head-lines 
chronicling the discovery, while the cumbrous 
vehicle went gliding along through the blue haze 
of the dusk and the smoke and the dust, — the 
medium through which the looming blocks of build- 
ings and the long double file of electric lights were 
visible down the avenue. "You'll live forever, 
while those men make millions on the tract they 
euchred me out of at ten dollars an acre! It 
would be a charity for you to fall off the car and 
break your backbone. They tell me concussion of 



126 THE JUGGLER. 

the brain is painless. I '11 swear I 'd feel justified 
if I should hide in a dark alley, some night, and 
garrote you as you go by to the club." 

"There 's another case of garroting in the 
paper," observed a mutual acquaintance by way 
of diversion. 

"I noticed it. That 's what reminded me of it. 
It 's like lassoing. I lived a long time in Texas," 
he said, as he swung himself off at a side-street, 
and disappeared in the closing haze that baffled 
the incandescent lights showing upon its density 
in yellow blurs without illuminating it. 

"You'd better look out for that man, sure 
enough," the literal-minded mutual acquaintance 
warned Lucien Royce. "He feels mighty sore. 
This company is going to make ' big money ' on 
his land." 

But Royce laughed it off. "I am the one who 
lives," he boasted. 

He found it not altogether so careless an exist- 
ence since it was worth so much financially. His 
acute sensibilities realized a sort of espionage be- 
fore he was definitely aware of it. He came to 
know that he was reckoned up. What he did, 
where he went, how he felt, were matters in which 
other people were concerning themselves. He 
resented the irksome experience as an attack on 
his liberty. He felt no longer a free man. And 
this impression grew as the yield from the property 
promised more and more. The Bonlej^ Company 
had gone to heavy expenses. They had put in 



THE JUGGLER. 127 

costly machinery. They had hired gangs and 
gangs of men. They had built miles of narrow- 
gauge railroad, to convey the stone by land as well 
as by water. It had become a gigantic venture. 
The jocose "Take care!" "Live for my sake!" 
"Be good to yourself! " which had at first formed 
the staple of the injunctions to him when he 
chanced to encounter any member of the company, 
'changed to serious solicitous inquiry which affronted 
him. More than once Mr. Bonley called upon him 
to remonstrate about late hours, heavy suppers, 
and the disastrous effects upon the constitution of 
drinking wine and strong waters. Thus the rubi- 
cund Mr. Gerault Bonley, whose countenance was 
brilliant with the glow of old Rye! In one in- 
stance, when Royce's somewhat cavalier and scorn- 
ful reception of these kind attentions served to 
rouse Mr. Bonley to the realization that the cesttd 
que vie claimed the right to have other objects in 
existence than merely to live for the corporation's 
sake, the president of the company apologized, but 
urged him to consider, for the justification of this 
anxiety, what large financial interests and liabili- 
ties hung upon the thread of his life. There was 
a panic among the company whenever he went to 
the seashore for a short vacation, and once he 
allowed himself to be persuaded out of a trip to 
Europe, of which acquiescence he was afterward 
ashamed, — so much so that when a place in the 
office of the Bonley Company was offered him, 
with a large increase of salary, but with the un- 



128 THE JUGGLER. 

avowed purpose of keeping him under surveillance, 
that he might always be at hand and easily reck- 
oned up, he declined it with such peremptoriness 
as to cause the company to relax this unwise exhi- 
bition of solicitude for the time, and greatly to 
please his own firm, Greenhalge, Gould & Fife, 
who had not relished the effort to decoy a confi- 
dential clerk from their employ. On one occasion 
when, in training for a boat-race, he was suddenly 
prostrated by the heat, the anxiety of the Gerault 
Bonley Marble Company knew no bounds, and its 
manifestation more than verged upon the ridic- 
ulous; it was the joke of the whole town. The 
claims of his own personal friends — he had no 
near relatives — were set at naught. The com- 
pany took possession of him. He came to himself 
in one of the well-appointed guest-chambers of 
Mr. Bonley's own house; and when he rallied, 
which he did almost immediately, with the recu- 
perative powers of youth and his great strength, he 
was detained there several days longer than was 
necessary by his host's insistence, until indeed the 
physician in charge laughed in the face of Mr. 
Gerault Bonley, the broker. 

"Take care you don't do anything eccentric," 
the doctor said in parting at last from his patient. 
"That company might shut you up in a lunatic 
asylum or a sanitarium, where you would be ready 
for inspection at all hours, — just to make sure 
you are alive, you see." 

It was meant for a joke, but it grated on the 



THE JUGGLER. 129 

nerves of the cestui que vie. And now it came 
back as he lay under the dark roof of Tubal Cain 
Sims's house, staring into the unresponsive night, 
with the thought that a good strong state prison 
would serve the purpose of the Marble Company, 
looking toward his safekeeping, more effectually 
still. He could well understand their despair 
upon the supposed determination of the life estate, 
for since they had secured the land at slight cost, 
the vast profits of the industry were to the ordinary 
business mind all the dearer, being the favor, as 
it were, of chance, or the uncovenanted mercy of 
Providence, — "clean make." How could they 
survive the reversion of the property, with all its 
present wealth and its future prospects, to the 
original grantor? His imagination, alert as it 
was, failed to respond to so heavy a demand upon 
its resources. Should they find that the death of 
the cestui que vie was spurious, their tenancy not 
yet expired, should they be restored to their former 
status, what a warning this untoward alarm would 
seem, what restraints upon his liberty might not 
be attempted! The idea bereft him of his last 
hope. Could he reasonably expect to escape prose- 
cution when his custody in the clutches of the law 
was so obviously to the interests of a powerful 
corporation like this? Even if his own firm of 
Greenhalge, Gould & Fife should be averse to it 
to avenge their losses, what powerful influence 
would be brought to bear upon them by the 
Gerault Bonley Marble Company ; what substantial 



130 THE JUGGLER. 

values were to be dangled before the eyes of a 
broken firm in the friendship and backing of a 
strong financial association like this! The Mar- 
ble Company would move heaven and earth to 
place him behind the bars. There could Mr. 
Bonley come and look at him any fine day, as he 
sat making shoes and saddles, — he had heard that 
at the penitentiary they put their swell guests to 
such occupations, and his deft fingers might com- 
mend their utility in this service to the common- 
wealth, — or perhaps busied in some clerical capa- 
city to which his long experience in coimting-rooms 
rendered him apt. Mr. Bonley's scarlet counte- 
nance and bristly white mustache were of a calmer 
aspect as they appeared in this vision than they 
had worn in reality for many a long day! The 
menu would contain naught to destroy the diges- 
tion of the cestui que vie or affright the Marble 
Company in the way of midnight suppers and un- 
limited champagne. There would be no wild up- 
roarious companions, no gambling escapades, no 
perilous activities on the horizontal bar, — what 
war had Mr. Bonley waged against his attachment 
to the gymnasium ! — no swimming-matches, no 
boat-races, no encounters with gloves or foils. 
Truly Mr. Bonley's estate would be gracious 
indeed ! 

No; Lucien Royce felt that his escape was a 
crowning mercy vouchsafed. His most imperative 
care should be to make it good, or he might well 
spend a decade of the best years of his life behind 



THE JUGGLER. 131 

the bars for a crime he had not committed. His 
incarceration would easily be compassed, were his 
defense far more complete than perverse circum- 
stance rendered possible, by the craft and persist- 
ence of men who had such large interests at stake 
on the life and well-being of a wild, adventurous, 
hairbrained boy. His supposititious death had 
saved his name, his commercial honor, which he 
held dear. John Grayson, with the theft of the 
belt and its treasure, had also taken his life — for 
he had no life left! He was dead! He was 
very dead! And let the Gerault Bonley Marble 
Company mourn him. With a laughing sneer 
on his face, he cursed again, as he had cursed a 
thousand times, the plastic folly, or the vagary 
of chance, or whatever fate it was that induced 
him to lend himself to the broker's scheme; for 
although he had thought it a mere formality, it 
had in effect sold him into a species of slavery for 
the rest of his natural life. " But is not my advice 
good advice?" Mr. Bonley had more than once 
urged upon his recalcitrant mood. "Is it not in 
your oimi interests as well as in ours? Is it not 
exactly the advice I would give to my own son?" 

"He needs it. Give it to him,'''' the cestui que 
vie would reply in flippant despair. But Mr. 
Bonley 's son was not worth so much money to the 
company, and he went his own ways with some 
celerity, all unchecked. 

The continually administered cautions, the sense 
of sustaining anxiety, espionage, criticism, of thus 



132 THE JUGGLER. 

sharing his life, had made it in some sort a burden 
to the merry cestui que vie ; and therefore, in the 
first days of his escape, the realization of the petty 
persecutions, the irksome advice of the ill-advised 
Mr. Bonley, shaken off and forever thwarted, 
seemed to the young man only matter for self- 
gratulation. In the accumulation of these trifles 
in his thoughts, he had lost sight of the far-reach- 
ing significance of the event until he had reached 
the haven of Etowah Cove, and his bodily fatigue 
and distress of mind were somewhat allayed. Then 
he began to perceive that in this fictitious death 
a great property had changed hands, a definite 
right was subverted; a terrible fraud had been 
practiced on the tenants ^:*er atitre vie, in that the 
life estate was not yet terminated. Mr. Gerault 
Bonley was mulcted of his prominence as a ludi- 
crous, pertinacious, troublous bore, and the per- 
sonality of the company was asserted as possessors 
of certain rights and large interests of which they 
were to be bereft through his agency. He was 
offered his choice, — to stay dead, or to go back 
and serve a term in the penitentiary for a crime 
he had never committed, to benefit the financial 
interests of Mr. Gerault Bonley and his associates. 
He sought now and again some solace in reflecting 
upon the hard bargain that Mr. Bonley had driven 
with the original owner, the poetic justice that his 
lands should revert to him in his lifetime, their 
value enhanced a thousandfold by their own inher- 
ent natural wealth, which had been merely devel- 



THE JUGGLER. 133 

oped, not bestowed, by the Marble Company. "I 
have made one poor soul happy, anyhow! It's 
just as well that he should get the land before they 
have sold and shipped all the rock in it. He 
would have nothing left except a hole in the ground 
but for this," he muttered to his pillow. For the 
Marble Company had been exempted by the terms 
of the grant from "any impeachment of waste," 
and had successfully defended a suit brought by 
the reversioner, who sought to restrain their opera- 
tions by showing that not even the surface of his 
tract would be left to him upon the determination of 
the estate per autre vie. " He never seemed to have 
any grudge against me, and I can't say I blame him 
for being glad I am dead," said Royce, seeking to 
gauge the sentiments of the joyful reversioner. 

Nevertheless, all his commercial instincts re- 
volted. They would not support this arbitrary 
dispensing of justice. The Gerault Bonley Mar- 
ble Company's right was definite and indefeasible, 
and unlawfully he had divested them of it. The 
idea was abhorrent to his commercial conscience. 
All the depth of character which he possessed lay in 
this endowment. He had no religious convictions, 
no spiritual estimate of the abstractions of right 
and wrong. To him the thought of religion was 
like a capitulation. It had never occurred to him 
as a thing to live by. It seemed of the nature of 
mortuaries, akin to last wills and testaments, of 
the very essence of finality. His moral structure 
was the creation of correct commercial principles, 



134 THE JUGGLER. 

— sound enough, but limited. It was an impene- 
trable external shell, at once an asset, a protection, 
and a virtue, but it had no intimate inner tissues. 
His soul languished inert within it. As far as 
his financial integrity was concerned, there had 
been no leanings to the wrong, no struggles against 
temptation, not even temptation; he was proof 
against it. His integrity diminished even his ca- 
pacity for repentance. He had never felt himself 
a sinner. On the contrary, he thought he had 
done mighty well. He had been for years in touch 
with the markets at home and abroad, but he could 
quote no spiritual values. For the first time in 
his life, he groped for a knowledge of the right, 
he strove with the definite sense of wrong-doing. 
His supposed death had all the taint of dishonor; 
it affected him as a false entry might have done. 
The indirect good that it wrought, the natural 
justice that it meted out, appealed to him no more 
than the success of speculating with the funds of 
the firm that employed him might serve to com- 
mend this peculation to his incorruptible commer- 
cial honor. 

He fared better when he sought to protest an 
irresponsibility. It was the Marble Company's 
affair to disprove his death if they could, to main- 
tain themselves in continual assurance of his life. 
"I 've seen old Bonley perform so long like a hen 
with one chicken that I imitate him instinctively. 
I assume a sort of guardianship of the Gerault 
Bonley Marble Company as they assumed it of 



THE JUGGLER. 135 

me, and one is as absurd as the other. The com- 
pany's counsel ought to be equal to the situation. 
I have nothing- to do with them. Their property- 
is held for a term of years, which happens to be 
the duration of my life. I take on as if a cestui 
que vie was a salaried officer of the Bonley Com- 
pany, — as if I were paid for drawing the breath 
of life. It is no part of my duty to report con- 
tinually for observation. I forfeit no pledge. I 
violate no trust. And self-preservation is the first 
law of nature." 

With these vacillations he had struggled in 
throes of mental agony as he lay on the ledges of 
the rocks above the river and affected to angle; 
or as he wandered alone through the woods; or 
when he sat, unheeding the drawling talk of his 
host, in the open passage where they lighted their 
pipes together, his evident preoccupation shrewdly 
noted by the suspicious mountaineer; or, more 
than all, in the silent watches of the night, be- 
fore physical fatigue could coerce sleep to his aid, 
— always arguing the wrong that his silence and 
absence wrought to others, yet the false suspicion 
on the part of Greenhalge, Gould & Fife, and 
the consequent terrible fate that his return would 
bring upon himself; the intrinsic justice in the 
restoration to the reversioner of his plundered 
lands, and yet the positive legal rights which the 
Gerault Bonley Marble Company held in their un- 
expired tenancy per autre vie ; the lies that thus 
conspired in their masquerade as truth, yet the 



136 THE JUGGLER. 

fact that the truth unmasked would prove the 
falsest of them all. He had never in all the exer- 
citations of his various problems seemed so near 
a definite and final decision as now. Never had 
he reverted so often to one basis of action. He 
determined that he would not return to the cer- 
tainty of an ignominious imprisonment on a false 
suspicion for the sole benefit of a strong corpora- 
tion of financial sharks, who, on the pretext of a 
tenancy per autre vie, were tearing the estate of 
their grantor from off the face of the earth ; the 
reversioner would have nothing left but literally 
a hole in the ground ! This awful sacrificial sur- 
render would serve no moral right, but one of 
those legalized robberies which arise from a fault 
of the law through its constitutional deficiencies, 
being at last only of human device. And if, he 
argued, it was not his function to remodel the 
laws, and administer them according to the moral 
basis of evident right, it was in this instance his 
privilege to dispense even-handed justice. 

But when he fell asleep, and his will lay dor- 
mant, and his reasoning faculties were blunted, 
and only his conscience vaguely throbbed with an 
unassuaged wound, the sense of the commercial 
wrong that he did, the realization of the definite 
legal right that he extinguished, the weight of re- 
sponsibility with which his mere breathing the 
breath of life had burdened him, all were reas- 
serted without the connivance of volition, and over 
and over again that poignant cry, "But the one 



THE JUGGLER. 137 

who lives — the one for whose life — his life — his 
life — his life!" rang through the house with all 
the pent-up agony of his days of doubt and striv- 
ings and distress in its tone. 

It was a silent house. No wind stirred. Not 
a leaf rustled. One might hear the ash crumble 
covering the embers on the hearth. A vague mo- 
notone came from the river. Outside, the still 
radiance of a late-risen moon lay pallid and lonely 
on the newly ploughed fields. Here and there 
crevices in the chinking between the logs of the 
walls made shift to admit a ray, sending its slight 
shaft through the brown gloom of the interior, 
visible itself and luminous in its filar tenuity, yet 
dispensing no light. One of these rays glimmered 
through the clapboards of the roof on the face of 
the sleeper, which showed in the dusk, with all its 
wan trouble on it, with the distinctness of some 
sharply cut cameo, to Tubal Cain Sims, who, half 
dressed and with shock head and bare feet, had 
climbed the stair, and lurked there listening, that 
perchance he might hear more to convey to the 
sharp-set curiosity of the magisterial lime-burner. 

This involuntary lapse of his resolution left no 
trace on the juggler's consciousness when he awoke 
the next morning. He was not aware that he had 
dreamed, that in sleeping he had swerved from his 
intention, far less that he had cried out in his un- 
realized mental anguish. He took comfort from 
his stanch mental poise. The fact that he held 
fast to his conclusion seemed to confirm the valid- 



138 THE JUGGLER. 

ity of his judgment. Here he was to begin life 
anew, and it behooved him to make the most and 
the best of it. For one moment the recollection 
of the world he had left almost overcame him, — 
the contrast it bore to his sorry future ! Even its 
workaday aspect, — the office, his high desk by 
the window, the thunder of the cotton-laden wag- 
ons in the streets and the clamor of voices impin- 
ging so slightly on his absorption in his work as to 
be ignoi-ed, — even this wrung a pang from him 
now. How much more the thought of the club, 
with its brilliant lights, and its luxury of furnish- 
ing, and its delectable cuisine, and the pretensions 
of its elder members, and the countenance they 
were pleased to show him ; of the fraternity halls 
where he was so prime a favorite; of the gymna- 
sium he affected, and the boating and swimming 
clubs ; of his choice social circle, with its germans 
and musicales, its little dinners and tally-ho drives, 
its private theatricals, its decorous parlors of re- 
fined and elegant suggestions, of which he valued 
the entree in proportion as he had once felt it 
jeopardized by the bruiting abroad of that wild 
gambling escapade, which he feared, in the estima- 
tion of the severe and straight-laced matrons and 
delicate-minded young girls, ill became a member 
of so elevated a coterie. They seemed, in his 
recollection, of an embellished beauty and aloof 
majesty infinitely removed from his sordid plight 
and maimed estate. He faltered as he thought of 
his hopeless alienation from it all, his dreary exile. 



THE JUGGLER. 139 

And then, with a sudden bracing of the nerves, 
he reflected on the view which this refined society 
would entertain of the alternative that fate pre- 
sented; the disgrace which he would sustain in his 
return was hardly to be mentioned to ears so po- 
lite ! Was he farther from his friends here than 
he would be there ? Was he more definitely ban- 
ished from his wonted sphere? He was dead to 
them, — forever dead, — and the sooner forgotten 
the better ! 

In pursuance of his determination, he went 
downstairs arrayed in the blue-checked homespun 
shirt and gray jeans trousers which Mrs. Sims 
with so great and dilatory labor had contrived. 
He thought he looked the typical mountaineer in 
this attire, with a pair of long cowhide boots, pur- 
chased at the cross-roads store, drawn up to his 
knees over the legs of the trousers, and a white 
wool hat of broad brim set far back on his dark 
red-brown hair. He could hardly have deceived 
even an unpracticed eye. The texture of his skin, 
shielded by his vocation from wind and weather; 
the careful grooming which was the habit of years ; 
the trained step and pose and manner, unconscious 
though they were; the hand, delicate, however 
muscular, and white, and with well-tended nails; 
the silken quality of his smooth hair and mustache ; 
the expression of the eye ; — he looked like a young 
"society swell" dressed for a rural role in private 
theatricals. 

Mrs. Sims, who was languidly setting the table 



140 THE JUGGLER. 

in the passage, while Euphemia, clashing the pots 
and pans and kettles in the room to the left, was 
"dishin' up" breakfast, paused in her wheezing 
hymn, catching sight of him, to survey her handi- 
work. 

"Waal!" she exclaimed in delighted pride, ap- 
propriating to her own skill the credit of the effect 
of his symmetry. "Now don't them clothes jes' 
set! I'll be boun' nobody kin say ez I ain't a 
plumb special hand fur the needle an' shears! I 
jes' want Tubal Cain Sims ter view them ' vain 
trappin's,' ez the hyme calls 'em, — though ez we 
ain't endowed by Providence with feathers, thar 
ain't no use in makin' a sin out'n hevin' the bes' 
clothes what we kin git." 

The juggler was as vain as a young man can 
well be. But he had seldom encountered such 
outspoken admiration, and was a trifle out of 
countenance; for what Mrs. Sims conceived to be 
the excellence of her own proficiency as a tailor 
he apprehended was due to the graces of his per- 
sonal endowment. He made her a flourishing bow 
of mock courtesy, and then stood leaning against 
the jamb of the door, one hand in the pocket of 
the gray trousers, the other readjusting the wide 
low shirt-collar about his throat. 

"I 'd like ter know what Tubal Cain Sims will 
say now!" exclaimed Mrs. Sims, pursuing corol- 
laries of the main proposition of triumph. "He 
'lows, whenst I make him ennythin' ter wear, ez 
he kin sca'cely find his way inter sech shapen 



THE JUGGLER. 141 

gear. An' whenst in 'em, he 'lows he '11 never 
git out no mo', an' air clad in his grave-clothes — 
goin' 'bout workin' an' sech — in his grave- 
clothes! It 's a plumb sin, the way he talks! " 

Her face clouded for an instant, remembering 
the ungrateful flouts ; then as her gaze returned to 
her guest, she dimpled anew. 

"But laws-a-massy ! " she cried, "how peart ye 
do 'pear in them clothes, to be sure! A heap 
more like sure enough folks than in them comical 
little pantees ye hev been a-wearin'." 

He could not forbear a laugh at her criticism of 
the spruce knickerbockers; but with the thought 
of the varying standards of a different status of 
life the realization of his exile came to him anew, 
and imbittered the decoction called coffee which 
Mrs. Sims handed to him, and although his eyes 
were dry, as he gulped it down, he tasted tears. 

It was difficult for him to resent any admiration 
of himself as too redundant, but she could not quit 
the subject, and pointed out to Tubal Cain Sims, 
when he entered, the excellence of the fit of the 
shirt about the shoulders and its flatness in the 
back; apparently arguing that if this shirt fitted 
the juggler, it was only Tubal Cain Sims's rugged 
temper and finical fancy that Ms shirt did not fit. 
The old man's prominent shoulder-blades were not 
long destined to be concealed by the worn cloth 
drawn taut across their recurved arches as he 
leaned slouchingly forward, and the loose ampli- 
tudes over his narrow bent chest mio^ht well have 



142 THE JUGGLER. 

been economized for a supplement across the shoul- 
ders. It never seemed to occur to either of them 
that the cloth should be cut to suit the figure, or 
at all events the bearing, of the wearer. She only 
tortured her helpless partner with her adherence 
to a pattern at least fifty years old, and which had 
fitted him well enough twenty -five years ago; but 
as seam, gusset, and band burst under the stress 
of his crookedness and increasing slouch, he con- 
sidered that the hand of Jane Ann Sims had ut- 
terly forgotten its cunning, and talked as if his 
clothes were a trap requiring a certain diligence 
of investigation to get into, and from which there 
was no escape. 

The juggler grew restive lest Euphemia should 
enter while he was a bone of contention between 
the two, for Mrs. Sims was still disposed to call 
on all who might behold to note the beauty of 
the fit of his shirt, and Tubal Cain Sims as reso- 
lutely refused to admire. Royce was ready to 
laugh at himself that he should thus desire to shirk 
these personalities in Euphemia's presence, and 
that he should assume for her a delicacy in the 
discussion which he was very sure Mrs. Sims would 
not appreciate. Yet he was not so coxcombical as 
to preempt for her Mrs. Sims's standpoint; he 
realized that she might be as stolidly unadmiring 
as Tubal Cain himself. He finished his breakfast 
with a hasty swallow or two, and was about to 
take himself off with his fishing-rod down to the 
river, hearing Mrs. Sims remarking after him, 



THE JUGGLER. 143 

"Ye oughter thank the Lord on your bended 
knees, young man, fur the fit o' them clothes," 
and Tubal Cain Sims's growl of objurgation that 
"folks oughter have better manners an' sense 'n 
ter be thankin' the Lord for the set o' thar clothes 
on the blessed Sabbath day." 

"Is this Sunday? " asked the juggler, and stood 
stock-still. 

"It air the blessed Sabbath," said Tubal Cain, 
his eyes still full of the misfit rancor and his mouth 
full of corn dodger. 

Ah, how Lucien Royce heard across the silent 
Cove the bells ringing from the church towers of 
St. Louis, hundreds of miles away! He distin- 
guished even the melody that the chimes were rip- 
pling out, — he would have sworn to it amongst a 
thousand, — and the booming of heavier metal 
sounding from neighboring steeples. He knew 
just how a certain dissonance impinged upon the 
melodious tumult, — the bell of an old church be- 
low Seventeenth Street that had a crack in it and 
rang false. The raucous voices of newsboys were 
calling the Sunday papers, much further up town 
than on week-days. The clanging of the cable 
cars sounded here, there, everywhere; the sunlit 
streets were full of people. And then, as his 
heart was throbbing near to breaking for this his 
world, his home, of which he was bereft, he real- 
ized how his imagination had cheated him. Across 
the Cove the slanting sun-rays had not yet reached 
the levels of the basin ; the red hue of the dawn- 



144 THE JUGGLER. 

ing still tinged them. The mists of the night 
clung yet in purple shadowy ravines. The dew 
was in the air. Away — away — the far city of 
the mirage lay sluggard and asleep. No bell rang 
there save the Angelus. Now and again a figure 
slipped along to early mass. The rumbling wheels 
of a baker's wagon or the tinkle of a milkman's 
bell might sovmd, — ■ a phase of the town, an hour 
of the day he did not know and for which he did 
not care. And so he was admonished to beware 
of fancies. This — this was his home, and here 
he was to spend his life. 

He hardly knew how he might contrive to 
spend the day, he said, as he flung himself down 
on a ledge of the rock overlooking the river. He 
appreciated how he would value the rest, had a 
week of hard work preceded it. He was no Sab- 
batarian on religious principles, but adhered to the 
theory as physically economical. As he lay smok- 
ing, he argued that much of his tendency to revert 
to the troubles that had whelmed him, to pine for 
even the minutiae of his old life, — aught that sug- 
gested it was dear ! — to forget that it had gone 
forever and could never be conjured back, and that 
a far different fate awaited him in his familiar 
world, was only an indication of the morbid influ- 
ence of idleness and mental solitude. The persist- 
ence of the activities of the human mind is but 
scantily realized. Given adequate subjects to 
work upon, to engross it, — a stent, so to speak, 
— and its powers seem rarely greater than its 



THE JUGGLER. 145 

task; but remove the objective point of occupa- 
tion, and the complications of the engine, its nor- 
mal strength yet its perilous fragility, its inhereiit 
tendencies to dislocation, its perpetual uncontrol- 
lable subjection to any idea, evolved at haphazard, 
clutched with a tenacity as of the muscles of a gal- 
vanized grasp, result in a chaos of disaster, the 
mere contemplation of which is wonderfully con- 
ducive to energy and the embellishment of toil. 

Blessed are the hard workers, for their minds 
and their hearts shall be sound. This truth was 
most deeply felt by the young exile from the busi- 
ness world as well as the world of pleasure. 

"I must get at something," he said to himself. 
"I must realize that I am here to stay. This jug- 
gling money " — he rattled in his pocket the silver 
that he had earned the evening of his ill-starred 
entertainment — "won't last forever, even at the 
rates of board and lodging in Etowah Cove. It 
would be the part of wisdom to ingratiate myseK 
with the miller, — cross-grained old donkey, — 
heljD him with the mill, marry the miller's daugh- 
ter, and succeed to the throne." 

He laughed, with a mocking relish of the incon- 
gruity of the idea. Then, as he thought of the 
miller's daughter, a vague perception came to him 
that he had never before encountered a woman 
appai'ently so indifferent to him; for indiiferenee 
was not the sentiment which he was wont to excite. 
He remembered, too, his hasty retreat from the 
table, lest her delicacy be offended if his garments 



146 THE JUGGLER. 

were descanted upon in her presence. "Am I 
going to persuade myself that I am in love with 
this rural Napoleon in petticoats? " he asked him- 
self scornfully. Then he argued that it was 
merely because he was not used to such critical 
scrutiny of his vestments except by his tailor. 
"All the same, I got out of there before the lady 
Euphemia appeared." He thus took as dispas- 
sionate note of the fact as if he were discussing 
the state of mind of another person. "I might 
meet a worse fate. She could be trusted to keep 
me extremely straight from now till the Judgment 
Day. She is so pretty — that — if she were a trifle 
softer — a trifle different, it wouldn't be such hard 
lines to make love to her." 

Perhaps it did not seem such "hard lines" when 
she suddenly came out of the house, later in the 
day; for as he glanced up the slope and beheld 
her, he rose promptly and went to meet her. 

It was a tortuous way up the slope ; the outcrop- 
ping ledges here and there projected so heavily 
that it was easier to skirt around than to climb 
over them. Brambles grew in shaggy patches; 
trees intervened; more than once, gnarled roots, 
struck but half in the ground, the bole rising at a 
sharp angle with the incline, threw him out of the 
line of a direct approach. He saw, in drawing 
near, that he was as yet unperceived, as she made 
her way slowly along the road. Her wonderful 
eyes were fixed meditatively, softly, upon the blue 
mountains beyond the Cove, showing through the 



THE JUGGLER. 147 

gap of the nearer purple ranges. Her lips had 
a drooping curve. The golden glimmers of her 
brown hair, rising in dense fairness above her 
white brow, had never seemed to him so distmct. 
She carried her pink sunbonnet in her hand; the 
large loose curls floated on the shoulders of her 
calico dress. It was of a sleazy texture, and the 
skirt fell in starchless folds from a short waist to 
the tops of her low-cut shoes. The color was a 
rose pink, and on it was scattered a pattern of 
great roses of the darkest red hue, and she looked 
as fantastic as if she were attired for a fancy-dress 
ball. Somehow, this accorded better with his 
humor than the sombre homespun attire which the 
mountain women as a rule affected. Her costume, 
regarded as a fad, did not so diminish her beauty. 
He could judge better of it, as he paused, still 
unperceived because of the intervening brambles, 
hardly ten feet from her. She looked like some 
old picture, as, swinging the bonnet by one string, 
she stood still for a moment, with an intent ex- 
pression in her lovely eyes. 

"Ef he speaks so agin," she said slowly, "ef he 
speaks so agin afore them all, 1 dunno how I kin 
abide it," 

There was a look of pain on her face which, how- 
ever, did not promise tears. He realized that 
tears were scarce with her and came hard. It was 
the look of one whose heart is pierced, and whose 
pride is bent, and whose endurance flags. Then, 
with an access of resolution visible in her soft face, 



148 THE JUGGLER. 

she suddenly moved onward, and the swaying 
sprays of the brambles painted the picture out. 

He had hardly time to take stock of his impres- 
sions, or note his own surprise, or marvel of what 
or of whom she spoke, when Mrs. Sims issued, 
waddling, from the house. She perceived him 
readily enough, having him in mind, pei-haps, and 
called to him to hurry up, "for we-uns air all 
go in' ter meetin' over yander at the church -house, 
whar ye gin that show o' yourn," displaying a fat 
dimply smile too jolly for the occasion, and all un- 
meet to companion the Sabbath-day expression on 
the sour visage of old Tubal Cain Sims, who was 
shviffling out with high shoulders and hollow chest 
and bent knees to join the family procession. 

Lucien Royce welcomed the summons with the 
half -bewildered delight of one unexpectedly rescued 
from the extremest griefs of ennui. His first in- 
stinct was to run and dress. Then remembering 
that he wore the best clothes he had, he composed 
himself with the reflection that he was in the fash- 
ion as it prevailed here. He was consoled, too, as 
he strolled along beside Mrs. Sims, for the lack of 
a younger companion, by reflecting that he wanted 
to make no mischief among any possible lovers of 
Euphemia, which his public appearance walking 
with her to church was well calculated to do. 

"I think I am safe with Mrs. Sims," he said to 
himself. "I suppose nobody is in love with her, 
— not even old Tubal Cain, whatever he may once 
have been." 



THE JUGGLER. 149 

He cast a glance at tlie lean and active partner 
of Mrs. Sims's joys and sorrows, forging along at 
a brisk pace which was certain to land him in 
church before the rest of the household had achieved 
half the distance. 



VI. 

The Cove was no longer silent. Akin to the 
cadence of the echo, one with the ethereal essence 
of the sighing and lapsing of the mountain stream, 
the distant choiring of the congregation in the 
unseen " church-house " seemed some indigenous 
voice of the wilderness, so sylvan, so plaintive, so 
replete with subtle solemn intimations, was the 
sound. The juggler did not at once distinguish it. 
Then it came anew with more definite meaning, 
and it smote upon his quivering, lacerated sensi- 
bilities. Not that in the sophisticated life which 
he had quitted he had valued the Sunday sermons, 
or cared for the house of the Lord, save architec- 
turally ; but he had loved the Sunday singing ; the 
great swelling reverberations of the organ were 
wont to stir his vei-y heartstrings; and while he 
appreciated the scope and the worth of the standard 
compositions of sacred music, he was always keen 
and critically alert to hear any new thing, with 
due allowance for the lower level. And should 
the consecrated hour prove heavy to his spirits, did 
not his seat near the door, his hat at hand, his 
quick, noiseless, deft step, provide amply for his 
retreat? With the realization of the loss of his 
life, his home, poignantly renewed by the vibra- 



THE JUGGLER. 151 

tions of the long, sustained, j)salraodic tones, he 
would fain have turned back now ; but the idea of 
the tedious solitude on the ledge of the river-bank, 
his heavy thoughts, the dread of the remonstrances 
and urgency of Mrs. Sims, constrained him. So 
he listened to the solemn rise and fall of the hymn- 
ing in the Cove, rising and falling with the wind, 
with a new sense of aghast trouble fixed upon him, 
as if some spectral thing had revealed itself in the 
wilderness as he walked unwary. 

Now and then, as they wended along amongst 
the great boles of the trees, with a narrow brook 
splashing and foaming in the deep rocky gully at 
one side of the red clay road, or losing itself in 
the densities of the laurel pressing so close on 
either hand, he caught in sudden turns through 
gaps in the foliage glimpses of the winding way 
further on and of Euphemia's rose-lmed dress. 
She was making but indifferent speed, despite the 
nimbleness of those " stout little brogans " that 
could cover the ground so fast when the will nerved 
them. Once he saw her standing in an open space 
and looking over the levels of the Cove below. 
Her pink bonnet was on her head now, its flaring 
brim pushed far back, and revealing that Pompa- 
dour-like effect of her fair hair which he so much 
admired, and here and there the large loose curls 
straying on her shoulders. With the short waist 
of her dress, and the long, straight, limp skirt, the 
picture-like suggestion was so complete that he had 
not one throb of that repulsion which ignorance 



152 THE JUGGLER. 

and coarse surroundings occasioned his dilettante 
exactingness. He looked at her with a kindling- 
eye, a new and alert interest. He began to seek 
to divine her mental processes. Why was she 
so reluctant ? why did she hesitate ? It could not 
be that the prospect of the dull droning of the 
preacher affrighted her ; she was not wont to seek 
her ease, and he knew instinctively that her Sj^ar- 
tan endurance would enable her to listen as long 
as the longest-winded of the saints could hold 
forth. Were her lips moving ? He could not be 
sure at the distance. Was she saying once more, 
" Ef he speaks so agin afore 'em all, I dunno how 
I kin abide it " ? 

He wondered who "he" could be — not Jack 
Ormsby, he was very sure. He wondered how 
Euphemia should have mustered the feeling to 
care. She seemed to him not comjalex, like other 
women. Her character was built of two elements, 
kindred and of the nature of complement one to 
the other, — pride and the love of power, the de- 
sire to rule. He had thought her possessed of as 
much coquetry at eighteen as her grandmother 
might have at eighty-five. And who was this 
" he " who brought that look of sweet solicitude, 
almost a quiver, to her lips ? 

" I should like to knock ' him ' down," he said 
to himself, humoring the theory of his pretended 
infatuation. 

She turned suddenly, holding up her head with 
a look of determination, and went on as before. 



THE JUGGLER. 153 

Far afield might Pride seem, to be sure, in the 
humble ways of these few settlers in the wilderness, 
yet here he was in full panoply, to walk, almost vis- 
ibly, alongside the simple mountain maiden, to 
enter even the church with her, and to take his 
seat beside her on one of the rude benches, already 
crowded. 

Her mother and the juggler were later still. 
The diurnal aspect of the little gray unpainted 
building in the midst of the green shadows of the 
great forests, with the widespreading boughs of 
the trees interlacing above its roof, was not famil- 
iar to Royce, who had been here only after dark 
on the evening of his memorable entertainment. 
The array of yokes of oxen, of wagons, of saddle- 
horses hitched to the trees, had been noisily invisi- 
ble in the blackness, on that occasion. The group 
of youths hanging about the sacred edifice outside 
had a prototype in the Sunday curbstone gather- 
ings everywhere, and he at once identified the spe- 
cies. A vague haze of dust pervaded the interior ; 
it gave a certain aspect of unreality to the ranks 
of intent figures on the benches, as if they were 
of the immaterial populace of dreams. A slant of 
the rich-hued sunlight fell athwart the room in a 
broad bar of a dully glamourous effect, showing 
a thousand shifting motes floating in the ethereal 
medium. A kindred tint glowed in the folds of 
a yellow bandanna handkerchief swinging from 
one of the dark brown beams, and served to ad- 
vertise its loss by some worshiper at the last meet- 



154 THE JUGGLER. 

ing. Not so cheerful was another waif from past 
congregations, — a baby's white knitted woolen 
hood ; it looked like the scalp of this shorn lamb of 
the flock, and was vaguely suggestive of prowling 
wolves. On the platform were four preachers 
who were participating in the exercises of the day. 
Two of muscular and massive form had an agricul- 
tural aspect rather than that of laborers in a spirit- 
ual vineyard, and were clad in brown jeans with 
rough, muddy cowhide boots ; they were dog- 
matic of countenance, and evidently well fed and 
pampered to the verge of arrogance ; they sat tilted 
back in their splint-bottomed chairs, chewing hard 
on their quids of tobacco, and wearing a certain 
easy, capable, confident mien as of an assurance of 
heavenly matters and a burly enjoyment of worldly 
prominence. They listened to a hymn which the 
third — whom Royce recognized as old Parson 
Greenought — was " lining out," as he stood at the 
table, with a kind of corroborative air as became 
past masters in all spiritual craft. They had trav- 
eled the road their colleague sought to point out in 
metre, and were not to be surprised at any of its 
long - ago - surmounted obstacles. At the end of 
every couplet, each of them, while still seated, burst 
into song with such patent disregard of the pitch 
of the other, the whole congregation blaring after, 
that the juggler quaked and winced as he sat 
among the men, — the women being carefully 
segregated on the other side of the church, — and 
had much ado to set his teeth and avoid wry faces. 



THE JUGGLER. 155 

The fourth minister was not singing. He sat with 
his head bowed in his hand, his elbow supported 
by the arm of his chair, as if lost in silent prayer. 
The juggler watched his every motion as for 
deliverance from the surging waves of sound, per- 
meated with that rancorous independence of uni- 
son, which floated around him, for he divined that 
this was the orator of the day. This young man 
lifted his face expectantly after a time, — a keen, 
thin, pale face, with black hair and dark gray eyes, 
and an absorbed ascetic expression. But Parson 
Greenought still " lined out " the sacred poetry, 
which was hobbling as to metre, and often without 
connection and bereft of meaning ; and with a wide 
opening of the mouth and a toss of the head, the 
two musically disposed pastors resolutely led the 
singing, and the congregation chorused tumultu- 
onsly. It was in some sort discipline for Brother 
Absalom Tynes to be obliged to sit in silence and 
wait while stanza followed stanza and theme was 
added to theme in the multifarious petition psal- 
modically preferred. The words were on his lips ; 
his heart burned for utterance ; he quivered with 
the very thought of his pent-up message. He was 
of that class of young preachers who have gone 
into the vineyard early, and with a determination 
to convert the world single-handed. Nothing but 
time and Satan can moderate their enthusiasms ; 
but time and Satan may be trusted. Too much 
zeal, — misdirected, young, unseemly, foolish, — 
Brother Tynes had been given to understand, was 



156 THE JUGGLER. 

his great f aiilt. ids besetting sin ; it would do 
more harm than good, and he had been admon- 
ished to pray against it. Perhaps the exhibition 
of it grated on his elder confreres as an iininten^ 
tional rebuke, beneath which they secretly smarted, 
remembering a time long ago — but of short du- 
ration, it may be — when they too had been fired 
with wild enthusiasm and were full of mad pro- 
jects, and went about turning every stone and wea- 
rying even the godly with the name of the Lord. 
So. to use the phrase of the politicians, they 
'•paired off" with Satan, as it were: forgetting 
that zeal is like gunpowder, once damped, forever 
damaged, and that their own had caught no spark 
from anv chance contiguous fire this manv a long 
day. 

That singing praises to the Lord shoidd be a 
means of " putting down "* Brother Tynes savors 
of the incongruous : but few human motives are 
less complex than those which animated Parson 
Greenought as he combined the edification of the 
congregation, the melody of worship, and the 
reduction of the pride of the pidpit orator, whose 
fame already extended beyond Etowah, and even 
to Tanglefoot Cove. The science of " putting 
down" any available subject is capable of utilizing 
and amalgamating unpromising elements, and as 
Parson Greenought cast up his eyes while he sang, 
and preserved a certain sanctimonious swaying of 
the body to and fro with the rhythm of the hynm 
he "lined out." the triumph of *■ simultaning " 



THE JUGGLER. 157 

these several discordant mental processes cost him 
no conscious effort and scarcely a realized impulse. 
The juggler looked about him with a sort of 
averse ciiriosity ; the traits of ignorant people 
appealed in no respect to his somewhat finical pre- 
possessions. Among his various knacks and talents 
was no pictorial facility, nor the perception of the 
picturesque as a mental attitude. He resented the 
assumption of special piety in the postures and 
facial expression here and there noticeable in the 
congregation ; he could have singled out those 
religionists whom he fancied thus vying with one 
another. One broad-shouldered and stalwart young 
man was given to particularly conspicuous demon- 
strations of godliness, exemplified chiefly in sudden 
startling " A-a-a-mens " sonoi'ously interpolated 
into the reading, a breathy, raucous blare of song 
as he lifted up his voice, — inexpressibly off the 
key, — and a sanctimonious awkward pose of the 
head with half -shut eyes. The juggler could have 
trounced this saint with hearty good will, for no 
other reason than that the man took pleasure in 
showing how religious he was ! Only Mrs. Sims 
exhibited no outward token of her happy estate as 
a " perfesser," but her salvation was considered a 
very doubtful matter, and even that she had " found 
peace " problematical, since she did not believe in 
special judgments alighting on the mistaken or the 
unconverted, and had surmised that the Lord would 
find out a way to excuse " them that had set on 
the mourners' bench " in vain. " Ef you hev jes' 



158 THE JUGGLER. 

started out," she would say to those unfortunate 
wights whom the members were allowed to per- 
secute with advice and exhortation as they cowered 
before the throne of grace, " don't you be 'feard. 
The Lord will meet ye more 'n halfway. Ef ye 
don't see him, 't ain't because he ain't thar. Jes' 
start out. That 's all ! " 

But Parson Greenought had warned her to for- 
bear these promissory pledges of so easy a salva- 
tion. For he wanted sinners all to gaze on that 
lake of brimstone and fire which none but him 
could so successfully navigate ; and now and again 
he had his triumph when some wretch in agonies 
of terror would sci^eech out that he or she was " so 
happy ! so happy ! " since to be " happy " by main 
force, so to speak, was the alternative he offered 
to the prospect of weltering there forever. So 
Jane Ann Sims held her peace, and preserved a 
fat and placid solemnity of countenance, and sang 
aloud in such wheezy audacity that the juggler 
could hear her breathe across the church. 

Only one countenance was doubtful, wistful, its 
muscles not adjusted to the discerning gaze of the 
congregation. Euphemia Sims sat near a window, 
the tempered light on the soft contours of her face. 
The flaring pink sunbonnet framed the rising 
mass of fair hair ; she gazed absently down at the 
floor ; her delicate young shoulders were outlined 
upon the masses of green leaves fluttering above 
the sill hard by. Her look so riveted Royce's 
attention that he sought to decipher it. What 



THE JUGGLER. 159 

did she fear ? There was a suggestion of wounded 
pride, most appealing in its incongruity with her 
normal calm, or hardness, or unresponsiveness, or 
whatever he might choose to call the nullity of 
that habitual untranslated expression. Why was 
she so grave, so sad? The sudden lifting of her 
long lashes and the intent fixing of her eyes di- 
rected his attention to the pulpit, and there he 
perceived that Brother Tynes was standing at last, 
beginning to elucidate his text. The juggler, 
relieved of the torture of the singing, braced his 
nerves for the torture of the sermon. Here he 
might have had a recourse in his facility of ab- 
stracting his mind. He had sat through many a 
sermon in this unreceptive state. He had cast 
up accounts, preserving a duality of identity in 
the secular activity of his mental faculties and the 
sabbatical decorum of his face and listening atti- 
tude. Between firstly and secondly he had once 
chased down three vagrant cents, — an error which 
had cost him fifteen hours of labor out of regular 
working time, — without which he could not bal- 
ance his accounts. Once — it was during the 
Christmas holidays — he had utilized the perora- 
tion of a long and searching discourse by the 
bishop of the diocese to evolve certain new and 
effective figures for the german which he was to 
lead the next evening,. and he had always esteemed 
that hour a most fruitful occasion. And again, 
during a special sermon, on foreign missions, he 
evolved a little melody, hardly more than a repe- 



160 THE JUGGLER. 

titious phrase, forever turning and coiling and 
doubling on itself, to which he adapted the art- 
fully repetitious words of a dainty chansonnette 
of a celebrated French poet with such skill and 
delicate inspiration of fitness that he often sang it 
afterward in choice musical circles to unbounded 
applause. He had sat under the sound of the 
gospel all his life, and he was as thorough a pagan 
as any savage. But alack I his was not the only 
deaf ear in those congregations — more 's the pitj' I 
and while we send missionaries to China and the 
slums of our own great cities, our civilized heathen 
of the upper classes are out of reach. 

It was perhaps because he now had no thought 
that would let him be friends with it — no sedu- 
lously conserved accounts, no bizarreries of the 
german to devise, no inspiration of melody in mind 
(the psalmody of Etowah Cove was enough to 
strike the music in him dumb for evermore) — 
that he followed the direction of Euphemia's gaze 
and composed himself to listen. 

He encountered a sudden and absolute surprise. 
The sermon was one of those examples of a fiery 
natural eloquence which sometimes serve to show 
to the postulant of culture how endowment may 
begin at the point where training leaves off. The 
rapt silence of Brother Tynes's audience and their 
kindling faces attested the recijirocal fervors of 
his enthusiasms. He was awkward and unlettered, 
with imcouth gestures and an uncultivated voice, 
but there burned like a white fire in his pale, thin 



THE JUGGLER. 161 

face a faith, an adoration, an exultation, which 
transfigured it. He had a fine and lofty ideal in 
the midst of the contortions of his ignorance, 
which he called doctrines, and presently he spoke 
only and in proteanwise of the mystery and the 
mercy of Kedeeming Love. The idea of reward, 
of punishment, of the hope of heaven and the fear 
of hell, did not seem to enter into his scheme of 
salvation. He sought to grasp the realization of 
an infinite sacrificial love, and he adjured his 
people to fall on their faces, with their faces in 
the dust, before the sacred marvel of the Atone- 
ment. The text " He first loved us " rang out 
again and again like a clarion call. Its simple 
cogency seemed to need no argument. How could 
the politic and mercenary motives of securing 
exemption from pain or the purchase of pleasure 
enter herein ? That phase of striking a fair bar- 
gain, so controlling to sordid human nature, was 
for the moment preposterous. Many a one of his 
simple hearers knew the joy of unrequited labor 
for love's sweet sake, of self - denial, of being 
hungry or tired or cold, in sacrificial content. 
More than one mother could hardly have given a 
practical reason why the crippled child or the ailing 
one should be the dearest, when its nurture could 
rouse no exj^ectation that it might live to work for 
her sake. More than one gray-haired son loved 
and honored the paralytic troublous old dotard in 
the warmest corner of the fireside all the more for 
his helplessness and the toil for his sake. Love 



162 TEE JUGGLER. 

makes duty dear. Love makes service light. In 
some one phase or other they all knew that love 
is for love's own sake. 

And this was all that he demanded in the great 
prophetic name of Christ even from the dread 
heights of Calvary, " My son, give me thine heart." 

Now and again sobs punctuated the discourse. 
Before there was any call for mourners to ap- 
proach the bench, an old white-headed man, who 
had resisted many an appeal to his fears on behalf 
of his soul, rose and shambled forward; others 
silently joined him where he sat looking at them 
over his shoulder, very conscious, a trifle crest- 
fallen, if not ashamed, thus to be forced from the 
stanch defenses which he had defiantly held through 
many a siege. The assisting ministers occasionally 
cleared their throats and shifted their crossed legs, 
with an expression of countenance which might be 
interpreted as deprecation of the factitious excite- 
ments of a sensational sermon. 

Euphemia Sims hearkened with a face of perfect 
decorum and superficial receptiveness. In her 
heart, rather than in her mind, she missed the true 
interpretation of the discourse. It did not seem to 
her so wonderful that she should be of a degree of 
importance to merit salvation. To be sure, in the 
sense of sharing original sin she supposed she was 
a sinner, — born so. But her life was ordered on 
a line of rectitude. Who kept so clean a house, 
who wove and milked and cooked and sewed so 
diligently, as she ? Who led for years the spelling- 



THE JUGGLER. 163 

class in this very house, whose brown walls might 
tell of her orthographic triumphs ? And she had 
got her religion, too, and had even shouted one 
day, albeit a quavering, half-hearted hosanna. So 
she looked on with a calm post-graduate manner 
at the gathering penitents at the mourners' bench. 
She too had passed through the preliminary stages 
of spiritual culture, and had taken her degree. 

The juggler, as he listened, repeatedly felt that 
cold thrill which he was wont to associate with a 
certain effect on his critical faculties. Only a high 
degree of excellence in whatever line appealing to 
them was capable of eliciting it. He had experi- 
enced it in this measui-e hitherto only in the j)lea- 
surable suspense and excitement, so intense as to 
be almost pain, in the dress circle of some crowded 
play-house, at the triumphant moment of a master- 
piece in the science of histrionism. 

The orator was approaching his climax. To so 
great a height had he risen that it seemed as if his 
utmost power could not reach beyond ; every mo- 
ment tingled with the expectation that the next 
word must herald a collapse, when, suddenly throw- 
ing himself on his knees, he cried, " Lead us in 
prayer, Brother Haines, — lead us in prayer to 
the foot of the cross ! " 

There was a startled movement among his col- 
leagues of the pulpit, charged with the prosaic sug- 
gestion that if they could they would deny Brother 
Haines — apjDarently a layman and seated among 
the congregation — the opportunity of thus pub- 



164 THE JUGGLER. 

licly approaching the throne of grace ; but the 
people ah'eady had crowded upon their knees, and 
a suppliant voice, pitched on a different key, rose 
into the stillness. 

Euphemia Sims sat for a moment as if she were 
turned to stone. A light both of pain and of 
anger was in her eyes. Her lips were stern and 
compressed. She felt her blood beating hard in 
her temples. Then she remembered the exacting 
decorums of the exercise, gathered her trim pink 
skirts about her, softly knelt down, and Pride 
knelt down beside her. 

She hardly heard the voice of Brother Owen 
Haines at first, as she put her dimpled elbows on 
the hard bench and held her head between her 
hands, so tumultuous were the surging pulses of 
humiliation and fear, and of love, too, in a way. 
And then it asserted itself upon her senses, although 
she was conscious first merely of tones, rich, mel- 
low, of delicate modidations and lingering vibra- 
tions, — differing infinitely from the clear, incisive, 
somewhat harsh utterances of the preacher ; but at 
last words came gradually to her comprehension. 

Commonplace words enough, to be sure, to excite 
so poignant a torture of agonized expectation in 
that heart, beating as one with Pride's, but pre- 
sently too oft repeated. Now and again a rau- 
cously cleared throat amongst the row of kneeling 
ministers told of a nervous stress of anxiety as to 
these verbal stumblings and inadequacies. Some- 
times a sentence was definitely broken, subject and 



THE JUGGLER. 165 

predicate hopelessly disjointed. Sometimes a clause 
barely suggested the thought in the brain, an irre- 
mediable solution of continuity in its expression. 
More than once occurred a painful pause, in which 
the heads of certain newly regenerate sinners, 
easily falling again under mundane influences or 
the control of Satan, turned alertly from the 
prayerful attitudes still conserved by their bodies 
to covertly survey the spellbound suppliant. Like 
unto these was the juggler. He had, on the first 
summons to prayer, decorously assumed that half- 
crouching posture common to devotionally disposed 
men, which intimates to the surrounding spectators 
the fact of a certain polite subduement of mind 
and body to divine worship. Then, remembering 
suddenly the character of mountaineer which he 
designed to assimilate, he plumped down on his 
knees — for the first time in many a long day — 
like the rest. And if in the ensuing excitements 
his mind did not match his lowly attitude, the 
juggler is not the only man who has ever been upon 
his knees with no prayer in his heart. Taking 
license from the stir near at hand, he too shifted 
his posture that his furtive glance might command 
a view of the man thus deputed to pray. 

The suiDpliant was among the congregation, but 
his face, as he knelt in an open space near the pul- 
pit, was irradiated by the slant of the sunset glow. 
Beheld above the benches and the kneeling congre- 
gation, it had a singulai-ly detached effect, — it 
was like the painting of a head ; all else was can- 



166 ■ THE JUGGLER. 

celed. For a moment, the juggler, his eyes grow- 
ing intent and grave as he gazed, could not account 
for a sense of familiarity with it, of having seen it 
often before. Then, with a reminiscence of dim 
religious surroundings, of tempered radiance stream- 
ing through translucent mediums, of flecks of deep 
rich tints, — red and blue and purple and amber, 
always with emitted undertones of light, — he 
realized its association with church windows, with 
the heights of clerestory twilight, with catherine- 
wheels luminous in dark transej)ts, with trifoliated 
symbols in chancel arches. It might have seemed, 
the idealizing glamour of the sunset in the rapt 
devotional expression, a study for a seraph's face ; 
in truth, one could hardly desire a more fitting pre- 
sentment of the angelic type. The fair hair, not 
gold even under the heightening sunlight, lay in 
gentle infantile curves along the broad forehead ; 
as it fell to the shoulder it showed tendencies to 
heavy undulations that were scarcely curls or ring- 
lets, and that grew diaphanous and cloudy toward 
their fibrous verges. The large languid blue eyes 
had long dark lashes, and the pathetic fervors, the 
adoration, the entreaty of their expression, moved 
sundry covert glances to a twinkle of laughter ; 
for this surpassed in some humorous sort the liberal 
limits assigned to the outward show of devotion in 
Etowah Cove. None of its other denizens ever 
looked like that, saint or sinner ! It was a subtle 
and complex expression, and, being incomprehensi- 
ble, it struck most of the observers as simply funny. 



THE JUGGLER. 167 

The high cheekbones and the pale unrounded 
cheek might have impressed an artist as somewhat 
too attenuated of contour to suggest the enjoyment 
of the eternal bliss of heaven, but they added to 
the extreme spirituality of the effect of the eyes, 
and with the congruous but delicate irregular nose 
and full lips made the face unusual and individ- 
ual. 

An odd face for the butt of a coarse joke. The 
congregation, still kneeling, stirred with a ripple 
of silent laughter. Here and there, as the glances 
of curious worshipers, looking furtively over the 
shoulder, encountered one another, a gleam of caus- 
tic comment or deprecating amusement was ex- 
changed ; and once a newly caught saint, not yet 
having wholly dropped the manners and quirks of 
the Old Man, from force of habit winked, wrinkled 
his nose, and grinned. For the halting supplica- 
tion, still offered in that melting melody of intona- 
tion, had passed from its disconnected plea for 
mercy, for the conversion of sinners, for the guid- 
ance of the congregation, for the spiritual profit of 
the meeting, and had boldly entered on a personal 
and unique petition, a prayer for the power to 
preach the gospel. The day of miracles, the 
learned say, is past. Even the illiterate congrega- 
tion in Etowah Cove expected none to be wrought in 
its midst. And surely only the hand of God could 
touch that faltering tongue to the full expression 
of the thought that trembled impotently upon it. 
What subtle unimagined rift was it between the 



168 THE JUGGLER. 

mind and the word, what breach in their mysterious 
telegraphy ! Elsewhere the phenomenon exists : the 
silent poet, whose metre beats in certain dumb fer- 
vors of the pulse ; the painter, whose picture glows 
only upon the retina of the mind's eye ; or those, 
unhappily not quiescent, who blurt and blunder as 
did Owen Haines in his incoherent monologue to 
Almighty God. But he was the single example in 
the experience of Etowah Cove, and to the literal- 
minded saints the spectacle of a man bent upon 
preaching the gospel, and yet so ill fitted for the 
task that he could scarce put half a dozen words 
into a faltering sentence, moved them now to mirth 
and now to wrath, according to the preponderance 
of merry or ascetic religionists in the assembly. 
Again and again, whenever an opportunity was 
vouchsafed, Owen Haines, with his illumined face 
and passionate appealing voice, publicly besought 
of God in the congregations of worshipers, where 
he felt prayer must most surely prevail, with the 
pulse and the heart and the word of all his world 
to bear him company to the throne of grace, the 
power to preach the gospel : — in. such phrase, such 
few repetitious disjointed words, disjecta membra 
of supplication, with so flagrant a display of hope- 
less incapacity, that it became almost the scandal 
of the meetings, and there had been a tacit agree- 
ment among the ministers who were to conduct the 
revival that he should not be called upon to pray. 
The exhibition of his eloquent burning face and his 
halting words, his faith and its open reiterated 



THE JUGGLER. 169 

denial, was not deemed edifying ; and indeed it 
had latterly begun to affect the gravity of certain 
members of the congregation of whose conversion 
the leaders had had great hopes. 

" He hev got ter fight that thar question out 
alone," said old man Greenought in indignation. 
" I won't gin him nare 'nother ' Amen.' He an' 
his tomfool wantin' ter preach the gorspel whenst 
he can't pray a 'spectable prayer is a puffick blem- 
ish on the divine service ; it 's fairly makin' game 
o' serious things, — his prayin' fur the power, — 
an' I dunno what the Lord is a-goin' ter do about 
it, but / ain't a-goin' ter lend my ear nare 'nother 
time." 

It was this choleric gentleman who at last half 
rose from his knees, and with a peremptory jerk 
of his thumb toward the failing sunlight brought 
Haines's aspiring spirit back to earth. He had 
gone far on the wings of those poor words, he had 
flown high. His thought had so possessed him that 
he did not realize what slight tincture of it his 
speech distilled for those who heard him. The minis- 
terial thumb jerking a warning of the flight of time, 
a certain covert jeer in the bent half-covered faces 
of those about him, brought the fact to him that 
this prayer was like so many others, voiced only 
in the throbs of his heart. The light was dying out 
of his eyes, the sunset glow had quitted him ; no 
fine illumined countenance now he bore, as of one 
who looks on some transcendent vision ; only a con- 
scious disciplined face, quiet and humbled and so 



170 THE JUGGLER. 

patient ! He broke off suddenly to say " Amen," 
for he sacrificed no connection, — he hardly knew 
whither he was rambling, — and the people scram- 
bled noisily to their feet, eager for dispersing. 

" What did you-uns call on him fur, ennyhow?" 
said old Greenought bluffly to Absalom Tyues. 
He had somewhat of a swaggering manner as he 
came up close to the thin, pallid young man. He 
took great joy in all the militant tropes descriptive 
of the Christian estate, and with the more liberty 
suited his secular manner to his ministerial rheto- 
ric. Since he waged so brisk a warfare against 
Sin and Satan, he often seemed about to turn his 
weapons, as if to keep his hand in, against his 
unoffending fellow man. 

Absalom Tynes did not flinch. " I called on 
him," he said a trifle drearily, for the fire of his 
exaltation, too, was quenched in that pathetic and 
ineffectual " prayin' fur the power," " kase ez I war 
a-preachin' the word I knowed hp war a-foUowin' 
me, an' I 'lowed I lied got him ter the p'int whar 
surely he mought lift up his heart. I 'lowed the 
Lord mought take pity on him ez longs ter serve 
him, an' so touch his lips an' gin him the gift o' a 
tongue o' fire. I can't sense it, somehow, — I 
don't onderstand it." 

" I do," Parson Greenought capably averred. 
" The Lord 's put him in the place whar he wants 
him, an' he '11 be made ter stay thar, — jes' a-per- 
sistin' in prayin' fur the power ! " 

" Thar ain't no lock an' key on prayer ez I 



THE JUGGLER. Ill 

knows on," responded the other a trifle testily. 
" A man kin pray fur what he wills." 

" Yes, an' he kin do without it, too, unless the 
Lord wills. Fight the devices o' Satan, an' don't 
git ter be a beggar at the throne fur gratifyin' yer 
own yearthly quirks. Prayin' an' a-prayin' fur the 
power ! The power 's a gift, my brothee, a free 
gift, an' no man will git it by baigin' an' baigin' 
an' teasin' fur it." 

He strode off, feeling that he had had the best 
of the discussion. He was discerning enough to 
be conscious that, despite his belligerencies, he was 
often inferior to his youthful confrere in the rheto- 
ric of the pulpit, and he relished the more worst- 
ing him in argument, thus proving the superiority 
of his judgment and solid reasoning capacities. 

Outside the door a group of loiterers still lin- 
gered. The juggler's prudential motives had col- 
lapsed utterly in the prospect of Mrs. Sims's soci- 
ety in the long walk home. He looked about him 
with a desperate hope of diversion, in which Eu- 
phemia and the curiosity she had newly excited 
were factors. But he was fain to be content with 
his elderly comj)anion, for as Euphemia's rose-hued 
dress blossomed in the portal against the dark 
brown background of the interior he noticed that 
Owen Haines was standing at the foot of the steps 
evidently awaiting her. The mountaineer gave her 
no greeting, but walked beside her as if his com- 
panionship were a matter of course. 

" Warn't that a plumb special sermon ? " he 



172 THE JUGGLER. 

said enthusiastically, turning his candid eyes upon 
her. " 'Pears like ter me 't war the best, the mel- 
tin'est, the searchin'est discourse I ever hear." 

There was a measure of contempt in her face. 
She would not have admitted that she thought hei*- 
self too good for the need of salvation, but the 
theme with all its cognate elements was palling. 
She replied with a definite note of sarcasm in her 
voice. " The bes' ? Waal, I hev hearn ye say 
that time an' time agin. The sermons air all the 
bes', 'cordin' ter you-uns." 

" Yes," he admitted a trifle drearily, " ef I lose 
my soul, 't won't be bekase I ain't hed the bes' 
chance fur salvation. I hev sot under a power o' 
good an' discernin' sermons in my time." 

The seraphic suggestions of his face, now that 
he was recalled to earth, were little marked, and 
presently totally merged when he clapped his big 
broad-brimmed hat upon that mass of cloudy, fine- 
fibred fair hair. The irreverent juggler could 
have laughed at the swiftness and completeness of 
the transition. Haines still wore that dreamy, far- 
away look which, however, with mundane associa- 
tions and modern garb, is apt to indicate an un- 
purposeful nature and a lack of energy rather 
than any lofty ideals and high resolves. The per- 
fect chiseling and contour of his countenance and 
its refined intimations were still patent to the dis- 
cerning observer; but without the preconceived 
idea drawn in the church from the aspect of his 
head, with the soul revealed for one rapt moment 



THE JUGGLER. 173 

through its facial expression, — picture-like, dissev- 
ered from the suggestion of body — Royce would 
hardly have perceived any spiritual trait of a higher 
type in the young mountaineer. Thus it is that only 
the outer man is known of men, and that ethereal 
essence of thought and emotion, the real being, is a 
stranger upon earth and foreign from the beginning. 
Royce, greedily snatching at the very straws of 
abstraction, watched the young couple as they 
strolled slowly along the red clay road. The 
slouching, thin, languid figure of the tall youth, 
the ill-fitting suit of brown jeans with the coat 
hanging so loosely from the narrow shoulders, the 
big white hat, the rough crumpled boots all ap- 
pealed to him with a pleasant sense of incongruity 
as the accoutrement of this object of mistaken 
identity, when a golden harp and a white robe and 
a sweep of wings would better have become the 
first glimpse caught in the church. Now and again, 
mechanically, involuntarily, Euphemia looked fui*- 
tively back over her shoulder at Royce. With all 
that surging pulse of pride in her heart she was 
strangely bereft of her wonted assurance. It 
would never have occurred to her, in her normal 
sphere of thought and action, to refer aught that 
concerned her to the judgment, the problematic 
opinion of another. But although she gave him 
so slight thought, although she could not definitely 
gauge its objects and interests, she had not been 
unnoting of that subtle pervasive mockery which 
characterized the juggler's habit of mind. Until 



174 THE JUGGLER. 

now, however, she had not cared at what or at 
whom the " game-maker " laughed, how loud, how 
long. The laughter of folly cannot serve to mock 
good substantial common sense which affords no 
purchase for ridicule ; it rebounds only upon the 
mocker. She apprehended naught in herself, her 
home, her parents, the Cove, deserving of scorn 
or sneers. Her pride was proof against this. It 
was because she herself deemed her lover ridicu- 
lous that she winced from Royce's imagined laugh 
now, as she had shrunk from the criticism of the 
rest of the congregation. But this mockery was 
of the intimate fireside circle. For Royce would 
go home with them, and bring it in his laugh, his 
glance ; nay, she would be conscious of it even 
in his silent recollections. She felt she had no 
refuge from it. She told herself that because she 
loved Haines she deprecated mockery as unworthy 
of him, she would fain shield him from the sneers 
of those not half so good as he. She would rather 
he should eat out his heart in silence than be- 
siege the throne of grace in any manner not cal- 
culated to inspire respect and admiration in those 
who heard his words addressed to the Almighty. 
As to the Deity, the goal of all these petitions, 
she never once thought of their spiritual effect, 
the possibility of an answer. She esteemed the 
pi-ayer as in the nature of a public sj^eech, a pub- 
lic exhibition, which, glorious in success, is con- 
temptible in its failure in proportion to the num- 
ber of witnesses and the scope of the effort. How 



THE JUGGLER. 



177 



could Owen Haines pray for the power to preach, 
when there was Absalom Tynes looking on so 
vainglorious and grand, doubtless esteeming him- 
self a most " servigrous " exhorter, and obviously 
vaunting his own godliness by implication in the 
fervor with which he called sinners to repentance ? 
How coidd Owen Haines seek so openly, so pain- 
fully, so terribly insistently, as a privilege, a boon, 
as an answer to all his prayers, as a sign from the 
heavens, as a token of salvation, as the price of his 
life, that capacity which was possessed so conspicu- 
ously, without a word of prayer, without a moment 
of spiritual wrestling, without a conscious effort, 
by Absalom Tynes ? 

" I 'd content myself with the power ter plough," 
she said to herself. 

Then, as he fell into retrospective thought, she 
said aloud, — her voice not ringing true as was its 
wont, but with a tremulous uncertain vlbi-ation, — 
" 'Pears like ter me, ez ye hain't been gin the 
power arter sech a sight o' prayer, 't would be 
better ter stop baigin' an' pesterin' the Lord 
'bout'n it." 

Thei-e was a moment's silence, during which the 
little roadside rill flung out on the air the rudi- 
ments of a song, — a high crystalline tremor, a 
whispering undertone, a comprehensive surging 
splash as of all its miniature currents resolved into 
one chord con tutta forza, and so to whispering 
and tentative tinklings again. He had turned his 
clear long-lashed blue eyes ujjon her, and she saw 



178 THE JUGGLER. 

combined his religious fervors with any intention 
so practical, so remunerative, so satisfying to the 
earthly sentiment of one not too good to live in 
this world. 

It was eminently in keeping with that phase of 
his character which she most contemned that he 
should, with his cheek still flushed, with his eyes 
wincing and narrowing as from a blow, begin a 
vehement defense, not of himself and his motives, 
but of Absalom Tynes. 

She would hardly listen. " I hev hearn ye talk 
about Absalom Tynes, an' I don't want ter hear 
no mo'. I know what I know. Tell me thar ain't 
no pride in the pul-^i^, — a-readin' an' a-talkin' 
an' a-preachin' so glib an' precise, an' showin' off 
so gran' afore the wimminfolks, an' a-singin' so 
full-mouthed an' loud, an' bein' the biggest man 
thar ; fur Satan, though he often gits his club-foot 
on the pul-^^ii stairs, ain't never been knowed ter 
step up ! Ye tell me that ain't true 'bout some, 
ef not that precious friend o' yourn, Absalom 
Tynes ? " 

" Euphemia," he said sternly in his turn, and 
her heart was full at the tone of his voice, " I 
dunno what idee you-uns hev got ; ye 'pear so — 
so — diff'unt — so " — He hesitated ; his words 
were not wont to be ready. 

" So diff'unt from what ? From you-uns ? I 
reckon so! Ef I war ter drap dead this minit, 
nuthin', nuthin' could hev made me act like you- 
uns, prayin' an' prayin' fur the power ter preach 



THE JUGGLER. 179 

— - whenst — whenst — Owen Haines, ye ain't even 
got the power ter pray ! The Lord denies ye that 

— even the power ter ax so ez — ter be fitten fur 
folks ter hear ! " 

" The Lord kin hear, Euphemy ; he reads the 
secret thoughts." 

" Let yourn be secret, then ! " cried Euphemia. 
" Fur the folks air listenin' too ter the thoughts 
which the Lord kin hear 'thout the need o' words 

— listenin' an' — an', Owen Haines, laffin' ! " She 
choked back a sob, as her eyes filled and the tears 
ran out on her scarlet cheek. With a stealthy 
gesture she wiped them away with the curtain of 
her pink sunbonnet, carrying herself very stiffly 
lest some unconsidered turn of the head betray her 
rush of emotion to the other church-goers loitering 
behind. When she lifted her eyes, the flow of 
tears all stanched, her sobs curbed, she beheld his 
eyes fixed sorrowfully upon her. 

" D' ye 'low I dunno that, Euphemy ? " he said, 
his voice trembling. " D' ye 'low I don't see 'em 
an' hear 'em too when I 'm nigh the Amen ? " 

Her tears burst out anew when she remembered 
that the " Amen " was often said for him by the 
presiding minister, with such final significance 
of intonation, ostentatiously rising the while from 
the kneeling posture, as to fix perforce a period 
to this prolix incoherency of " prayin' fur the 
power." 

" Ye don'tyee? it," she protested, very cautiously 
sobbing, for since her grief would not be denied, 



180 THE JUGGLER. 

she indulged it under strict guard, — " ye don't 
feel it ! But me, — it cuts me like a knife ! " 

" Why, Phemie," he said softly, walking closer 
to her side, — noticing which she moved nearer 
the verge of the stream, that she might keep the 
distance between them exactly the same as before, 
not that she wished to repel him, but that the de- 
monstration might escape the notice of those who 
followed, — " 'pears ter me like ye ought n't ter 
keer fur the laffin' an' mockin', fur mebbe I '11 be 
visited with a outpourin' o' the sperit, an' be 
'lowed ter work fur my Lord like I wanter do." 

She turned and looked at him ; they had reached 
the top of a sort of promontory that jutted out 
over a leafy sea of the budding forests on the 
levels of the Cove below. The whole world of the 
spring was a-blooming. Even the tulip-trees, with 
their splendid dignity of height and imposing 
girth, seeming well able to spare garlands, wore to 
their topmost sprays myriads of red and yellow 
bells swaying in the breeze. The azaleas were all 
a-blow, and a flowering vine, the merest groundling, 
but decked with delicate white corymbs, lay across 
the path. The view of the sinking sun was inter- 
cepted by a great purple range, heavy and low- 
ering of shadow and sombre of hue, but through 
the gap toward the west, as if glimpsed through 
some massive gate, was visible a splendid irradia- 
tion overspreading the yellow-green valley and the 
blue mountains beyond ; so vividly azure was this 
tint that the color seemed to share the vernal im- 



THE JUGGLER. 181 

pulse and glowed with unparalleled radiance, like 
some embellishment of the spring which the grosser 
seasons of the year might not compass. From 
below, where the beetling rock overhung a wilder- 
ness of rhododendron, voices came up on the soft 
air. The others of the party had taken the short 
cut. She heard her mother's wheeze, the juggler's 
low mellow voice, her father's irritable raucous 
response, and she realized that she might speak 
without interi'uption. 

" The Lord 's got nuthin' fur ye,"' she averred 
vehemently ; " he don't need yer preachin' an' he 
don't listen ter yer prayers. Ye hev come ter be 
the laffin'-stock o' the meetiu' an' the jye o' the 
game-makers o' the Cove. An' ef — ef ye don't 
gin it up — I — I — ye '11 hev ter gin me up — one 
or t'other — me or that." 

Haines was not slow now. He understood her 
in a flash. The covert grin, the scornful titter, 
the zestful wink, — she cared more for these small 
demonstrations of the unthinkingly merry or the 
censorious scoffer than for him or the problematic 
work that his Master might send him the grace to 
do. Nevertheless, he steadied himself to put this 
into words that he might make sure beyond per- 
adventure. He had taken off his hat. The wind 
was blowing back the masses of his fine curling 
fair hair fi-om his broad low brow. His cheeks 
were flushed, his eyes alight and intense. He 
held his head slightly forward. " I must gin you 
up, or gin up prayin' fur the power ter preach ? " 



182 THE JUGGLER. 

" Prayin' in public — 'fore the folks — I mean ; 
in tlie church-house or at camp-meetin'. Oh, I 
can't marry a man gin over ter sech prayin' afore 
the congregations ! but ye kin go off yander alone 
in the woods or on the mountings, an' pray, ef so 
minded, till the skies fall, for all I 'm keerin'." 

" Ye mind kase people laff," he said slowly. 

" Ef people laff at me kase I be foolish, I mind 
it. Ef people laff at me kase they air fools, they 
air welcome ter thar laffin' an' thar folly too." 
This discrimination was plain. But as he still 
looked dreamy and dazed, she made the applica- 
tion for him. " Ye can't preach ; ye can't pray ; 
ye make a idjit o' yerself tryin'. I can't marry 
no sech man 'thout ye gin up prayin' 'fore folks." 

" Ye think mo' o' folks 'n the Lord ? " Haines 
demanded, with a touch of that ministerial asperity 
expert in imputing sin. 

But so widely diffused are the principles of 
Christianity that the well-grounded layman can 
rarely be silenced even by a minister with a call, 
much less poor uncommissioned tongue-tied Owen 
Haines. 

"The Lord makes allowances which people 
can't an' won't," she retorted. " He hears the 
thought an' the sigh, an' even the voice of a tear." 

" He does ! He does ! " cried Owen Haines, 
fired by the very suggestion, his face, his eyes, his 
lips aflame. " An' may my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth an' my right hand be withered 
an' forget its cunning, may agues an' anguish rack 



THE JUGGLER. 183 

my body an' may my mind dwindle ter the sense 
of a brute beastis, ef ever I promise ter put bonds 
on prayer or eschew the hope of my heart in the 
house of God. I '11 pray fur the power — I '11 
pray fur the power ter preach till I lose the gift o' 
speech — till 1 kin say no word but ' the power ! — 
the power ! — the power ' ! " 

Euphemia cowered before the enthusiasm her 
chance phrase had conjured up. She had not, in 
a certain sense, doubted the sincerity of her lover's 
religious fervor. She secretly and unconsciously 
doubted the validity of any spiritual life. She 
covild not postulate the sacrificial temperament. 
She could not realize how he would have embraced 
any votive opportunity. He was of the tyj)e akin 
to the anchorite, the monastic recluse, — who in 
default of aught else offers the kernel of life, if 
not its empty shell, — even the martyr. For he 
had within him that fiery exaltation which might 
have held him stanch at the stake, and lifted his 
voice in triumphant psalmody above the roar of 
the flames. But although he had had his spiritual 
sufferings of denial, and floutings, and painful 
patience, and hope that played the juggler with 
despair, he bad anticipated no ordeal like this. 
He looked in her eyes for some token of relenting, 
his own full of tears above the hardly quenched 
brightness of his fervor of faith, a quiver on his 
lips. 

Her face was set and stern. With a realization 
how deeply the fantasy had struck roots in his 



184 THE JUGGLER. 

nature, she perceived that she must needs share it 
or flee it. She was hardly aware of what she did 
mechanically, but as she painstakingly tied the 
pink strings of her bonnet under her dimpled chin 
it was with an air of finality, of taking leave. 
She was not unconscious of a certain pathetic 
appeal in his life, seemingly unnoted by God, yet 
for God's service, and rejected by love. But she 
thought that if he pitied himself without avail she 
need not reproach herself that she did not pity 
him more. And truly she had scant pity to spare. 
And so he stood there and said " Farewell " as in 
a dream, and as in a dream she left him. 



VII. 

It created something of a sensation, one morn- 
ing, when the juggler — for the mountaineers as 
solemnly distinguished him by the name he had 
given them of his queer vocation as if it were the 
serious profession of law — appeared among the 
lime-burners on the slope of the mountain. With 
his sensitive perceptions, he could not fail to notice 
their paucity of courtesy, the look askance, the 
interchanged glances. Singularly obtuse, however, 
he must have seemed, for he presently ensconced 
himself, with a great show of consideration for his 
own comfort, as if for a stay of length, in the shel- 
tered recess where the lime-burners were seated 
at some distance from the fire, for the heat was 
searching and oppressive. The heavy shadow of 
the cliff protected them from the sun. Below, the 
valley was spread out like a map. If one would 
have dreams, a sylvan ditty that an unseen stream, 
in a deep ravine hard by, was rippling out like a 
chime of silver bells swaying in the wayward wind 
came now to the ear, and now was silent, and 
somehow invited the fantasies of drowsing. Every- 
thing that grew betokened the spring. Even the 
great pines which knew no devastation of winter 
bore testimony to the vernal impulse, and stood 



186 THE JUGGLER. 

bedecked with fair young shoots as with a thousand 
waxen tapers. 

The juggler, lying at full length on the moss, 
his hands clasped under his head, watched their 
serried ranks all adown the slope, broken here and 
there by the high-tinted verdure of the deciduous 
trees. He conserved a silence that seemed unin- 
tentional and accidental, perhaps because of his 
unconstrained attitude and of his casual expression 
of countenance, since he apparently took no note 
of the cessation of conversation among the lime- 
burners which had supervened on his arrival. 

Talk was soon resumed, however, curiosity be- 
coming a factor. 

" Who 's 'tendin' the pertracted meetin' down 
yander, from Sims's ? " demanded Peter Knowles, 
looking at Royce to intimate whom he addressed. 

" Only the head of the house," responded the 
juggler : " Tubal Cain, the man of might, him- 
self." 

Peter Knowles still gazed at him with frowning 
fixity. " That thar Jane Ann Sims ain't got no 
mo' religion 'n a Dominicky hen," he observed. 

" Well," the juggler was fain to contend in a 
sentiment of loyalty to the roof that sheltered him, 
" she is busy ; she has her household duties to look 
after." 

" Shucks, ye young buzzard ! ye can't fool me ! " 
exclaimed Tip Wrothers, in half-jocular triumph. 
" Don't all the Cove know ez Jane Ann Sims don't 
turn a hand ef Phemie's thar ter do it fur her ? " 



THE JUGGLER. 187 

" Yaas," drawled Gideon Beck, " an' Phemie 
ain't got much mo' religion 'n her mammy. Jes' 
wunst hev she been 'tendin' on the meetin', — an' 
this air Thursday, an' the mourners constant, an' 
a great awakenin'. Phemie Sims would set the 
nangel Gabriel down ter wait in the passage whilst 
she war a-polishin' of her milk-crocks, ef he hed 
been sent ter fetch' her ter heaven, an' she warn't 
through her dairy worship," 

" If Mrs. Sims does n't turn her hand, there 's 
obliged to be somebody there to turn one. We 
don't have any rations of manna served out these 
days," argued the juggler. " It 's well that some- 
body stays at home. Tubal Cain and I are enough 
church-goers for one house." 

" Air you-uns a mourner ? " demanded Beck, 
with a sudden accession of interest. 

" No," answered the juggler, " though I 've lots 
and cords to mourn over." He shifted his position 
with a sigh. 

Wrothers and Knowles exchanged a significant 
glance which Beck, did not observe. With a dis- 
tinct bridling he said, " / be a perfesser. / hev 
been a perfesser fur the past ten year." 

" It must be a great satisfaction," responded the 



It was something, however, which he did not 
envy, and this fact was so patent that it roused the' 
rancor of Beck. Oiie of the dearest delights of 
possession is often the impotent grudging of him 
who hath not. 



188 THE JUGGLER. 

The juggler, despite liis assured demeanor, had 
reverted to that sense of discomfort which had 
earlier beset him when he went abroad in the Cove. 
In the church he had marked a certain agitated 
curiosity as members of the congregation who had 
been at the " show " recognized the man who was 
deemed so indisputably in league with Satan. But 
this was merged in the fast accumulating inter- 
est of the meetings, and upon a second attend- 
ance, barring that he was here and there covertly 
pointed out to wide-eyed newcomers, denizens of 
further heights and more retired dells, his entrance 
scarcely made a ripple of excitement. This he 
accounted eminently satisfactory. It had been his 
intention to accustom the mountaineers to the 
sight of him, to have his accomplishments as a 
prestidigitator grow stale as a story that is told, to 
be looked upon as a familiar and a member of 
the Sims household ; all this favored his disguise 
and his escape from notoriety and question. He 
had been prepared for the surprise and curiosity 
which the presence of a stranger in so secluded a 
region naturally excites. Since learning somewhat 
of the superstitions and distorted religious ideas 
which prevailed among so ignorant and sequestered 
a people, he could even understand their fear of 
his simple feats of legerdemain, and the referring 
of the capacity to work these seeming miracles to 
collusion with the devil. But altogether different, 
mysterious, threatening, unnerving, was the keen 
inimical visfilance which he discerned in Peter 



THE JUGGLER. 189 

Knowles's eye ; the sense of some withheld 
thought, some unimagined expectation, which might 
be apprehended yet not divined, roused afresh the 
terror of detection which had begun to slumber 
in the security of this haven with its new life 
and absolute death to the old world. As the jug- 
gler lay on his back, with his eyes fixed on that 
deep blue sky of May, fringed about with the 
fibrous pines above his head, he tried to elucidate 
the problem. Something alien, something danger- 
ous, something removed it was from the fantasies 
of the ignorant mountaineers. But for all his 
keenness and his long training in the haunts of 
men, for all his close observation and his habit of 
just deduction, that thin-lipped, narrow, ascetic vis- 
age gave him no inkling what this withheld thought 
might be, — how it could be elicited, met, thwarted. 
Only one gleam of significance from the eye he 
interpreted, a distinct note of interrogation. What- 
ever the expectation might be, to whatever it might 
be leading, it was not devoid of uncertainty and 
of involuntary inquiry. 

He attempted to reassure himself. He tried to 
argue that it was only his consciousness surcharged 
with its weighty secret which made him flinch 
when any questioning eye was turned upon him. 
What could this mountaineer, ignorant and inex- 
perienced as the rest, divine or suspect, — how 
could he dream of the truth ? 

And yet, so much was at stake : his liberty, his 
name, his honor, — nay, the sheerest commercial 



190 THE JUGGLER. 

honesty. And so far all had gone well ! He 
clung now to his fictitious death as if the prospect 
of this existence in the Cove had not well-nigh 
made it real, so had his heart sunk within him at 
the thought of the future. He said to himself 
sharply that he would not be brought to bay by 
this clumsy schemer. Surely he could meet craft 
with craft. The old habit of transacting business 
had no doubt sufficed to keep his countenance 
impassive, and he would set himself to add to the 
little they knew circumstances of which they did 
not dream, well calculated to baffle preconceived 
theories. 

" No, I 'm not a mourner," he replied to Beck's 
sanctimonious gaze, — " not much ! The kind of 
sinner I am goes to meeting to see the girls." 

A momentary silence ensued. Not that this 
pernicious motive for seeking the house of worship 
was unheard of in Etowah Cove. There as else- 
where it was a very usual symjjtom of original sin. 
Few saints, however indurated by holiness against 
such perversion of the obvious uses of the sanctu- 
ary, but could remember certain soft and callow 
days when the theme of salvation held forth no 
greater reward than the occupancy of crowded back 
benches and the unrestricted gaze of round young 
eyes. It was, nevertheless, a motive so contrary 
to the suspicion which Knowles and Sims himself 
had entertained of the juggler's sojourn here and 
had grafted on the credulity of their cronies, — a 
lightsome motive, so incompatible with the grisly 



THE JUGGLER. 191 

suggestions of murder, and flight from justice, and 
the expectation of capture and condign punish- 
ment, — that it could not be at first assimilated 
with his supposed identity as a fugitive and crim- 
inal. His sudden unaccounted-for presence here, 
the unexplained prolonged stay, the report of the 
silent preoccupied hours which he spent on the 
ledges over the river, fishing with an unbaited hook, 
the troubled silence, the answers at haphazard, the 
pallid languid apparition after sleepless nights, 
and, more than all, the agonized cries from out the 
feigned miseries of dreams, all tallied fairly and 
justified the theory built upon them. But this 
new element interjected so abruptly had a disinte- 
grating subversive effect. 

" Waal, ain't all the gals in the kentry mighty 
nigh down yander at the meetin' now?" demanded 
Beck. 

He spoke mechanically, for he had lost sight of 
his effort to induce the juggler to attend upon the 
means of grace, if ever he had seriously entertained 
it, Sind he would not, on sober reflection, have 
offered this frivolous inducement as a loadstone to 
draw the reluctant heavenward, — let perdition 
seize him first ! 

" Plenty there, no doubt," said the juggler 
uncommunicatively, as if having taken counsel 
within himself. 

Old Josiah Cobbs chuckled knowingly, as he sat 
on the stump of the tree which he most affected 
and nursed his knee. " The right one ain't thar, 



192 THE JUGGLER. 

— that 's the hitch ! All the gals but one, an' 
that one wuth all the rest, hey ? " He chuckled 
once more, thinking he was peculiarly keen-witted 
to spy out the secret of the juggler's indifference 
to prayer and praise. He perceived naught of the 
subtler significance of the disclosure, and easily quit- 
ting the subject he turned his head as if to listen. 

The sound of the hymning rose suddenly on the 
breeze. From far away it was, if one must mete 
out the distance by the windings of the red clay 
road and the miles of fragrant springtide woods 
that intervened. But the music came straight 
through the air like the winged thing it is. And 
now it soared in solemn jubilance, and now it sank 
with soft fluctuations, and presently he recognized 
the tune and fell to humming it in unison with 
that far-away worship and with that air of soft 
pleasure in the religious cadences which one may 
often see in the aged, and which suggests the idea 
that in growing old hymns become as folk-song on 
the lips of the returning exile, and in every inflec- 
tion is the rapture of going home. 

The others neither heard nor heeded. They 
reminded Lucien Royce, as they were grouped 
around him, — some standing, some sitting or 
reclining on the mossy rocks in the flickering 
shade, but every eye fixed speculatively on him, — 
of that fable in many tongues wherein the beasts 
of the field find a sleeping man and hold a congress 
to determine the genus of the animal, his capaci- 
ties and utilities. He looked as inadvertent as he 



THE JUGGLER. 193 

could, and but for the jeopardy of all he held dear 
he might have discovered in the situation food for 
mirth. 

Jack Ormsby, who had not spoken heretofore, 
sat with a great clasp-knife in his hand whittling 
into thin slivers a bit of the bird's-eye maple that 
lay prone on the ground as if it had no better uses 
in manufacture than to furnish fuel to burn lime. 
He suddenly said, regardless of the possible infer- 
ence and with a certain surly emphasis, " I hev 
hearn tell ez Euphemia Sims air a-goin' ter marry 
Owen Haines." 

" I don't believe it ! " cried the juggler. 

Swift significant glances were exchanged among 
the others as he pulled himself into a sitting pos- 
ture and looked with challenging controversy at 
Ormsby. The young mountaineer seemed surprised 
at this direct demonstration. 

" They hev been keepin' comp'ny cornsider'ble, 
ennyhow," he persisted. 

" Let bygones be bygones," the juggler said, 
with his wonted easy flippancy. 

Old Cobbs rejoiced in the idea of love-making in 
the abstract. He had not realized who was the 
girl whose absence apparently rendered the crowded 
church but a barren desert. He only apprehended 
that one of the disputants advanced the possibility 
of a future marriage which the other denied. He 
sided at once with conjvigal bliss. 

"I reckon it must be true," he urged. "Thar 
ain't nuthin' ter be said agin it." 



194 THE JUGGLER. 

" Except he 's a fool ! " exclaimed the juggler, 
with rancor. 

" Ye mean 'bout prayin' fur the power ? " asked 
Beck. 

" A tremendous fool ! He can't preach. He 
has n't the endowment, the gift of the gab. He 
has no call from above or below." 

Royce felt no antagonism toward the man, and he 
realized that they all shared his standpoint, but he 
was not ill pleased that he should seem to be jeal- 
ously decrying Euphemia's lover. 

" Phemie don't 'low he be a fool, I '11 be 
bound," said old Cobbs. " I hev viewed a many a 
man 'counted a puffick id jit, mighty nigh, at the 
sto' an' the blacksmith shop, yit at home 'mongst 
his wimminfolks he be a mo' splendugious pusson 
'n the President o' the Nunited States." 

" I reckon Jack 's right," remarked Beck. " I 
reckon they '11 marry." This stroke, he reflected 
with satisfaction, cut not ouly the juggler, but 
Ormsby also, notwithstanding the fact that it was 
the theory advanced by the young mountaineer 
himself. 

" I '11 bet my hat they don't," declared the jug- 
gler eagerly. 

This suggestion of superior knowledge, of cer- 
tainty, on the part of a stranger angered Jack 
Ormsby, who vibrated between his red-hot jealousy 
of the juggler on one side and of Owen Haines on 
the other. 

" We-uns know Phemie Sims better 'n ye do ! " 



THE JUGGLER. 195 

he said, as if this were an argument despite the 
chameleon-hued clianges of the feminine mind. 
" Ye never seen her till ye kem ter Etowah Cove." 

" How do you know I did n't ? " retorted the 
juggler warily. He sat leaning forward, his hat in 
his hand ; his hair, grown longer than its wont, 
was crumpled on his forehead ; he looked at Ormsby 
with a glitter of triumph in his red-brown eyes. 

" Whar 'd ye kem from jes' afore ye got hyar ? " 
demanded Ormsby huskily. 

" I don't know why you are so inquisitive, my 
son," returned the juggler, airily flouting, " but 
since you wish to know — from Piomingo Cove." 

This was true in a literal sense. Since he had 
been here, and had sought, with that instinct natu- 
ral to civilized people, to grasp the details of the 
surrounding country, — some specimens of the 
genus not being able to sleep until the points of 
the compass are satisfactorily indicated and ar- 
ranged in their well-regidated mjnds, — he had 
learned that the rugged valley which he had 
traversed, with only another cove intervening before 
he reached Etowah, was Piomingo Cove. They all 
remembered Euphemia's recent visit there. The 
inference was but too plain. He had doubtless 
seen her at her grandmother's house down in Pio- 
mingo Cove, and, fascinated by her beauty and 
charm, he had followed her here. And here he 
lingered, — what so natural ! A proud, headstrong 
maiden like Euphemia was not to be won in a day ; 
and should he leave her, with Jack Ormsby and 



196 THE JUGGLER. 

Owen Haines inciting each other to haste and 
urgency, were matters likely to remain until his 
return as they were now? Most of the lime- 
burners' clique never hereafter believed aught but 
that this was the solution of the mystery of the jug- 
gler's sojourn in Etowah Cove. 

Royce went down the mountain flushed with vic- 
tory. He had descried a strong and favorable 
revolution in popular sentiment toward him, and 
the duty nearest at hand was to make the illusion 
true and lay siege to the heart of Euphemia. 

He was not concerned as to how his wooing 
should sjjeed. It was only essential that it should 
be a demonstration sufficiently marked to justify his 
lingering presence here and sustain the impression 
which he had made on the lime-burners. He said 
this again and again to himself, to appease a cer- 
tain repugnance which he began to experience 
when the idea with which he had lightly played 
became a definite and constraining course of action. 
He remembered that in reverie he had even gone 
so far as to canvass the disguise which marriage 
might afford, settling him here permanently as if 
he were a native, and, as time should pass, lessen- 
ing daily the chance of the detection of his identity 
and of his life heretofore. He realized that for the 
next twenty years this discovery would be impend- 
ing at anymoment. He had a great respect for the 
truth as truth, and its inherent capacity for prevail- 
ing ; and this led him to fear it the more. A lie has 
so fatal a proclivity to collapse. He had often told 



THE JUGGLER. 197 

himself that it was the part of policy to accept life 
here as one of the mountaineers, content with their 
portion of the good things vouchsafed, the brand of 
undeserved shame evaded, the hardshijj of igno- 
minious imprisonment eluded, the struggle of pov- 
erty reduced to its minimum in this Arcadian 
existence ; for sometimes he realized anew, with 
a half-dazed sense, that the old life was indeed 
gone forever, — if for naught else, by reason of 
his financial losses in the collapse of the firm of 
Greenhalge, Gould & Fife. 

He now stipulated within himself, however, that 
this was to be only a feint of love-making, — a 
flirtation, he would have termed it, were it to be 
illumined by wax candles, or the electric light, 
or gas, in lieu of the guttering tallow dip. He 
adduced with a sense of protection — and he could 
not forbear a laugh at himself and his sudden ter- 
rors — the certainty with which he had cause to 
know that the heart of the fair daughter of the 
miller was already bestowed on the young " crank," 
as he called the man " who was fool enough to jjray 
for what he wanted." Yet for all it was to be 
only a mere semblance of capture, he could but be 
dubious of these chains with which he was about 
to invest himself of deliberate intention ; heretofore 
he had fallen headlong in love and headlong out, 
and would not have shackled himself of his own 
volition. Thus he rattled Cupid's fetters tenta- 
tively, timorously, judging of their weight, and 
with a wish to be safely out of them as well as 
swiftly into them. 



198 THE JUGGLER. 

It was but a feint, he reassured himself. On her 
part, she would have an additional conquest to 
boast of ; and as to him, all the world — of Etowah 
Cove — would see with what grace he would " wear 
the willow-tree." 

" Since Phyllis hath forsaken me ! " he sang 
airily, as he made his way down the sharp declivity. 

Never in all his mental exercitations did he 
dream of difficulty in conveying to her intelligence 
an intimation of the supposed state of his heart. 
It had been his experience that such intimations 
are like spontaneous combustion : they take fire 
from no appreciable provocation. Nay, he had 
known of many wills-o'-the-wisp in this sort, sug- 
gesting flame where there was no fire, for it is a 
trait of the feminine creature to often overrate the 
power of her charms, and to predicate desolation 
therefrom in altogether thriving insensible hearts. 
But perhaps because of her absorption Euphemia 
took no notice of a certain change in his manner 
toward her, which had been heretofore incidental 
and non-committal and inexpressive. Mrs. Sims, 
however, with that alertness to which the meddler 
in other people's love affairs is ever prone, marked 
it with inward perturbation, lest it should attract 
the attention of Tubal Cain Sims, whose evident 
antagonism to the juggler she had ascribed merely 
to a perverse humor. From the beginning, how- 
ever, Royce had found especial favor in her eyes, 
— at first because he was so travel-worn and rain- 
soaked, and fevered and exhausted. Mrs. Sims 



THE JUGGLER. 199 

had not experienced such solicitude since her only- 
child was an ailing infant. Although he disproved 
her diagnosis of his illness and her arbitrary plans 
of treatment by appearing fresh and well the next 
morning, as if he had been newly created, she for- 
gave him his recovery, and liked him because he 
was so sti-ong and handsome and pleasant-spoken, 
and in some vague way, to her gi'oping inexperi- 
enced realization of the various strata of human 
beings, so different, and so superior, and so capa- 
ble of apisreciating the wonderful Euphemia that 
he was really to be accounted worthy of the relent- 
ing of fate which permitted him to see her. After 
Euphemia's return Mrs. Sims suffered a certain 
disappointment that the young people took such 
scant notice of each other in coming and going the 
household ways, and she was wont to console her- 
self now and then by contemplating them furtively 
as they sat opposite, one on each side of the table, 
and fetching the fattest of her sighs to think what 
a handsome couple they would make ! She re- 
membered, however, as in duty bound, Owen 
Haines, and perhaps she drew from this conscious- 
ness deeper sighs than either of the young lovers 
covdd have furnished to any occasion. She was 
not so proud as Euphemia, and she thought that if 
the Lord visited no judgment on Owen Haines for 
his pertinacity in praying for the power, his fellow 
saints or fellow sinners — whichever they might 
be most appropriately called — ought to be able to 
endure the ten minutes wasted in the experiment 



200 THE JUGGLER. 

to win the consent of Heaven. But she wished 
that her prospective son-in-law could be more prac- 
tical of mind. She realized that Haines was 
dreamy, and that his spiritual aspirations were 
destined to be thwarted. They had sent deep 
roots into his nature, and she fancied that she 
could foresee the effect on his later years, — years 
pallid, listless, forever yearning after a spiritual 
fantasy always denied ; forever reaching backward 
with regret for the past wasted in an unasked and 
seemingly a spurned service. Her motherly heart 
went out to Owen Haines, and she would fain 
have coddled him out of hi& — religion, was it? 
She did not know ; she could not argue. 

But Euphemia was her only child, and it is not 
necessary that the materials shall be ivory and 
gold and curious inlay to enable a zealous wor- 
shiper to set up an idol. Mrs. Sims looked into 
the juggler's handsome face with its alert eyes and 
blithe mundane expression, and as proxy she loved 
him so heartily that she did not doubt his past, 
nor carp at his future, nor question his motives. 
The fact of his lingering here so long — for he 
had asked onl}^ a night's lodging, and afterward 
had taken board by the week — occurred to her 
more than once as a symptom of a sentimental 
interest in Euphemia ; for otherwise why did he 
not betake himself about his affairs ? This theory 
had languished recently, since naught developed 
to support it. 

Now when she began to suspect that this vicari- 



THE JUGGLER. 201 

ous sentiment of hers on Eupliemia's account was 
about to meet a return, Mrs. Sims's heart was all 
a-flutter with anxiety and pity and secret exulta- 
tion. One moment she trembled lest Euphemia 
should mark the thoughtful silent scrutiny of 
which she was the subject, but when she chanced to 
lift her long-lashed eyes, the juggler reddened sud- 
denly, averted his own, and drank his coffee scald- 
ing hot. Euphemia evidently was oblivious of him, 
and Mrs. Sims became wroth within her amiable- 
seeming mask, and said to herself that she would 
as soon have a dough child, since one could " take 
notice ez peart ez Phemie." Perhaps because of 
Mrs. Sims's superabundant flesh, which rendered 
her of a quiescent appearance, however active her 
interest, and perhaps because she did not appeal 
in any manner to the ungrateful juggler's hyper- 
critical and finical prepossessions, he had no sub- 
tle intimations that she was cognizant in a degree 
of his mental processes, and had noted the fact 
of the frequent serious dwelling of his eyes, and 
manifestly his thoughts, upon Euphemia. 

The girl had never been so beautiful as now. In 
these later days, that saddened pride which at once 
subdued and sustained her added a dignity to her 
expression of which earlier it would have been 
incapable. It spiritualized her exquisite eyes ; so 
often downcast they were and so slowly lifted that 
the length of the thick dark lashes affected the 
observer as a hitherto unnoted element of beauty. 
Her eyes always had a certain look of expectation, 



202 THE JUGGLER. 

— now starlike as with the radiance of renewing 
hope, now pathetic and full of shadows. It seemed 
to the juggler, unconsciously sympathetic, that 
those incomparable eyes might have conjured the 
man bodily into the road where they looked so 
wistfully to see him, so vainly. 

" Confound the fellow ! " he said to himself. 
" Why does n't he come ? I 'd like to hale him 
here by the long hair of that tow head of his — if 
she wants to see him." And his heart glowed 
with resentment against poor Owen Haines, who 
thought in his folly that a woman's " No " is to be 
classed among the recognized forms of negation, 
and was realizing on far Chilhowee all the bitter- 
ness of rejected love and denied prayers. 

After a while Royce despaired of drawing her 
attention to himself, — he who had been in his 
own circle the cynosure of all youthful eyes. 
" There 's nothing in the world so stupid as a girl 
in love," he moralized, irritated at last. 

This state of unwilling obscurity developed in 
him a degree of perversity. He was prepared to 
assume an attitude of lowly admiration, of humble 
subservience, the kiss-the-hem-of-your-robe-save-for- 
the-foolishness-of-it sort of look which might im- 
press her and the rest of the Sims family and all 
admiring spectators with the fact of how stuck 
full of Cupid's arrows he had now become. But 
no man can play the role of lover, however lamely, 
when the lady of his adoration notices him no 
more than a piece of furniture. 



THE JUGGLER. 203 

As he went through the passage one day, she 
happened to be there alone, tilted back in her 
cliair against the wall, her small feet upon one of 
the rungs, her curls stirring in the breeze, droning 
laboriously aloud from the Third Reader, the 
pride and limit of her achievement. 

" Here," he said cavalierly, reaching out and 
taking the book quickly from her hand, " let me 
show you how Zread that." 

Now elocution had been one of the versatile jug- 
gler's chief accomplishments. He read the simple 
stanzas in a style of much finish. His voice was of 
a quality smooth as velvet, and his power of enun- 
ciation had been trained to that degree that its 
cultivation was apparent only in the results, and 
might have seemed a natural endowment, so scan- 
tily was the idea of effort suggested. His special 
and individual capacity lay in the subtle inflec- 
tions of tone, which elicited from the verses mean- 
ings hitherto undreamed of by her. It was as if a 
stone had been flung into still water. Above these 
suddenly interjected new interpretations the circles 
of thought widened from one elastic remove to 
another, and Euphemia sat dazed in the contempla- 
tion of these diverse whorls and concentric convolu- 
tions of the obvious idea. She said nothing as he 
handed back the book with an elaborate ballroom 
bow, but gazed up at him with an absorbed, serious 
face, all softened and gently appealing like a be- 
wildered child's, and then fixed her eyes intently 
upon the pa^e, as if seeking to find and hold those 



204 THE JUGGLER. 

transient illusions of fickle fancy that had glim- 
mered so alluringly through the plain, manifest 
text. He left her thus as he put on his hat and 
stepped out upon the path leading down the slope. 
He glanced back once, to see her still sitting there, 
motionless but for the wind which swayed the fair 
loosely curled hair of her bent head and the folds 
of her faint green dress as it did the sprays of the 
vines on the oj)posite side of the passage, which 
grew so thick that they formed a dark background 
for her figure in the cool shadowy green dusk; 
otherwise he might not have been able to distinguish 
it from out the glare and glister of the open sunny 
space where he stood. He gazed unobserved for a 
moment ; then he turned and went on in much dis- 
satisfaction of spirit. It was no way, he argued 
within himself, to assume the character of a lovesick 
swain by demonstrating his superiority to the fair 
maiden, — to flout her poor and painful efforts by 
the exhibition of his glib accomplishment. " I 
must needs always have an audience, — be always 
exhibiting my various feats and knacks. I was 
born a juggler," he said ruefully. 

But that evening when they sat at supper, — 
much later than usual, since the favorite Spot had 
wandered far into the forest, and did not retui'n till 
she was sought and found and driven reluctantly 
home, with many pauses by the way, — the furtive 
glances across the table did not emigrate fi'om his 
side of it. The meal was served in the main room 
of the cabin, to avoid the cloud of moths which the 



THE JUGGLER. 205 

light outside in the passage would attract. In the 
white, languid, dispirited glow of the tallow dip 
the furnishings of the apartment were but dimly 
visible. Now and again the flicker of the wind set 
astir the pendent strings of pepper and bunches of 
dried herbs and various indiscriminate gear that 
swung from the beams. The red embers where 
the supper had been cooked were spread apart 
on the hearth that the heat might be lessened, and 
here and there through the white efflorescence of 
the ash only a tinge of the vermilion hues of the 
coals could be discerned. Despite its subdued red 
glare the failing fire had little irradiating effect, 
and added scantily to the cheer of the apartment. 
The batten shutter flapped back and forth with a 
wooden clamor ; the wind had brought clouds and 
rain impended, and Tubal Cain Sims's corn was 
not yet all planted, and the ground would probably 
be too wet to plough for a week or more. Grum 
and indignant because of this possible dispensation 
of Providence, he sat in his shirt-sleeves, with his 
shock head bent, only looking up from under his 
grizzled shaggy eyebrows to discern in the glimmer 
of the candle the food he wanted, and only speak- 
ing to growl for it. The one crumb of comfort he 
coveted was denied him. A certain johnny-cake 
had burnt up " bodaciously " on its board as it 
baked before the fire, . and it would seem that Tu- 
bal Cain Sims, from his youth up, had subsisted 
solely on the hope of this most dainty of rural 
cates, so surlily did he receive the news, and so 



206 THE JUGGLER. 

solemnly did lie demand to be told how in the 
name of Moses a cake that never was put near the 
fire, but baked by the heat thrown on the hearth, 
could be reduced to cinders. 

" Witched somehows, I reckon," suggested Mrs. 
Sims easily ; and since argument could not move 
that massive lady, Tubal Cain resorted to silent 
sulks, not in the vain hope of shaking her equili- 
brium, but for the sake of their own solace to the 
affronted spirit. 

Although this disaster chanced within Euphe- 
mia's own jurisdiction and beneath her presidial 
care, she took no part in the spirited colloquy on 
the subject, but seemed absorbed in thought, ever 
and anon casting a covert look at the young man. 
As of late he had fallen into the habit, with the 
opportunity afforded at meal-times, of contemplat- 
ing her with swift and furtive glances, more than 
once their eyes met, to the visible embarrassment 
of both ; the juggler, to his astonishment, coloring 
furiously as might any country boy, and a touch of 
surprise and almost inquiry becoming visible in the 
eyes of Euphemia. Strange that so poor and primi- 
tive a contrivance as a pallid tallow dip could set 
such stars of radiant beauty in those long-lashed 
pensive orbs. They looked bewilderingiy lovely to 
the young man as they were suddenly fixed upon 
him, intent with the first intimation of personal in- 
terest which he had ever discerned in their depths. 

"How long hev you-uns hed schoolin'?" she 
demanded abruptly. 



THE JUGGLER. . 207 

" Schooling ? I ? Oh yes. From the time I was 
six years old till I was twenty-two," he replied. 

Her face was a study of amazement. " Did 
school keep reg'lar all them years in the cove whar 
you-iins lived ? " she asked. 

" Oh yes, school kept as regular as taxes." He 
had half a mind to explain that it was not always 
the same institution which had the honor of train- 
ing his youthful faculties, and to enumerate the 
various gradations which had their share in his 
proficiency, from the kindergarten, and the gram- 
mar school, to the academic and collegiate career ; 
but he stopped short, reflecting that this might 
result in self -betrayal in some sort. 

Her mind was at work. Her eyes and face were 
troubled. " We-uns hev hed school in the Cove 
two years consider' ble time ago," she remarked. 
" They 'low the money air short, somehows." 

" That ain't no differ ter we-uns," said Mrs. 
Sims cheerily. " Phemie I'arned all thar is ter 
know." 

Even old Tubal Cain threw off dull care for a 
moment and vouchsafed a prideful refrain : " I 
'lowed the chile woidd put out her eyes studyin' 
an' readin' so constant, but she hev got her eyesight 
and her I'arnin' too." 

But Phemie's face was flushed with a sudden 
painful glow. " I ain't got ez much ez some," she 
faltered, her head drooping slightly. 

In the midst of the clamor of denial of any 
greater possible proficiency, from the two old peo- 



208 • THE JUGGLER. 

pie, who had not heard the juggler's reading during 
the afternoon, she involuntarily cast upon him so 
aj^pealing, so disarming a glance that for once he 
was ashamed to even secretly laugh at them. 

" If it 's erudition that goes," he said afterward, 
lighting his pipe under the stars and finding the 
grace to laugh instead at himself, " I am the 
learned man to suit the occasion." 



VIII. 

Euphemia's interest did not relax. What 
strange perversity of fate was it that this little 
clod of humanity, so humbly placed, upon the very 
ground of existence, as it were, should have been 
instinct with that high, keen, fine appreciation of 
learning for its own sake ? — for she knew naught 
of its more sordid rewards, and could not have 
dreamed that the relative estimation of these 
values, even by those of happiest opportunities, 
is often reversed, the reward making the worth of 
the learning. She did not realize an aspiration. 
Her wings simply fluttered because she felt the 
impulse to rise. Royce could not have conceived 
of aught more densely ignorant. He had known 
no mind more naturally intelligent. Its acquisi- 
tiveness hardly differentiated its objects ; it only 
grasped them. The Third Reader bade fair to be- 
come a burden. He could scarcely put his foot on 
the sill of the passage before he heard the flutter of 
its leaves, and the much-thumbed, dog-eared old 
volume was offered to his hand with the restrained 
enthusiasm of the remark, " Ye '11 hev time ter read 
a piece afore dinner," or supjjer, or bedtime, as the 
case might be. There was a certain embarrassment 
in these symposia. Mrs. Sims, it is true, looked 



210 THE JUGGLER. 

on smilingly, with her vicarious affection shining 
in her eyes, but a chance question developed the 
fact that she understood hardly one word out of 
ten, the vocabulary of ignorance being of most 
constricting limitations ; while Tubal Sims openly 
and gruffly sneered down the performance, tossing 
his shock head at every conclusion, and protesting 
that the young man read so fast, an' with so many 
ups an' downs, an' with such a clippin' an' bob- 
tailin' of his words that it was plumb ridic'lous. 
For him, give him good Scriptur' readin', slow an' 
percise, like the I'arned men in the pul-^i^. Did 
Pa' son Tynes read in that flibberty-gibberty way ? 
He reckoned not. And he wagged his head as if 
he would fain take his oath on that, the spirit of 
affirmation so possessed him. Moreover, Royce 
did not consider this Third Reader a jDarticularly 
meritorious compilation ; he often flung its pages 
back and forth in vain search of a satisfactory 
selection, and doubtless would have declined to 
waste the merits of his rendering on the least vapid 
had it not been for the submissive, expectant face 
of Euphemia, as she sat waiting in her chair, bolt 
upright, school- wise, with her hands clasped in her 
lap, the subdued radiance of her eyes capable of 
making a much wiser man do a more foolish thing. 
For his own sake — he did not dream of the possi- 
bility of the development of her taste — he would 
fain have had a wider choice that his delicate per- 
ceptions might suffer no despite, and one day he 
bethought himself of the resources of memory. 



THE JUGGLER. 211 

The young people were both down at the mill. 
Some domestic errand had brought Euphemia 
there, and he chanced to be on a ledge near at 
hand languidly essaying to fish. He asked her a 
question touching the further course of the stream 
and the locality of a notable fishing-ground further 
down. As she replied, she paused and stood ex- 
pectantly in the doorway, dangling her green sun- 
bonnet by the string. 

The mill was silent, as was its wont; the after- 
noon sunlight glinted through the dense laurel and 
the sparse spring foliage of the deciduous trees; 
the great cliff on a ledge of which Royce was 
standing beetled above the smooth flow of the 
stream. Many a fissure broke the massive walls 
of stone; here herbage grew and vines swung, and 
the mould was moist and fragrant ; the perfume of 
the wild cherry tree in a niche on the summit filled 
all the air. Close b}'", a great sycamore which had 
fallen in a storm stretched from one bank to the 
other : its white bark and bare branches were re- 
fleeted in the clear water with wondrous fidelity ; 
even a redbird with his tufted crest, as he fluttered 
and strutted up and down the white boughs, now 
and again uttering sharp cries of alarm; and even 
a nest in a crotch, and his sober-hued little brown- 
feathered mate with her head, devoid of any deco- 
ration in the way of unnecessary and vainglorious 
tufts, stretched far out in anxiety and ti'embling. 

Euphemia pointed out these reflections in the 
water, and after another long pause, "" Ef we-uns 



212 THE JUGGLER. 

hed the book now, ye could read," she sighed re- 
gretfully. 

He played his line negligently ; he cast his eyes 
to the far, far sky, as if his memory dwelt on high. 
Then he began to recite. The wind stirred in the 
trees; on the dark lustrous water a shimmer of 
sunshine fluctuated like some ethereal golden mesh. 
Once, the joy of spring and the bliss of love and 
the buoyancy of life overcame the fear in the red- 
bird's heart, and he sang out suddenly, as if he 
too would have to do with the poetry of thought 
and the melody of utterance, and the little brown 
bird in the nest listened in admiring silence. All 
the time Eoyce was conscious of Euphemia's 
amazed eyes on his face; when he had finished he 
could scarce trust himself to meet the mute rapture 
of her gaze. He looked down at his futile line 
dragging on the water, and among the sounds of 
the sibilantly lapsing currents and the leaves 
wafted by the wind he heard her long-drawn sigh 
of the relaxing of the tension of delight, and he 
turned and met her eyes with a laugh in his own 
in which there was only a gentle mirth. 

After this he had no peace. He was reminded 
of the importunacy of juvenile consiuners of sto- 
ries, whose interest seems whetted by the incapa- 
city to read and thus purvey romance for their 
own delectation. He found it conducive to his 
entertainment to relapse into prose, and he re- 
hearsed many a work of fiction from memory, fail- 
ing seldom of the details, but in such lapses as 



THE JUGGLER. 213 

must needs come boldly supplying the deficit by 
invention. It is true that in these recitals Euphe- 
mia was debarred the graces of the style of the 
authors, but then the juggler thought he had a 
very good style of his own. All this involved long 
digressions, historical, geographical, astronomical, 
political, to explain the status of the personnel or 
the locus in qxio ; and while he talked her eyes 
never left his face. He had a habit of looking 
straight at his interlocutor, whoever this might be, 
and it was thus, perhaps, that he could with such 
distinctness conjure the image of those eyes of 
hers upon the retina of his mind at moments of 
darkness or absence or reverie, as he would. Much 
that he said she could not at first comprehend, and 
again he was reminded of the inquisitors of the 
nursery in the multitude and unsparingness of her 
questions; only, so searching and keen and apt 
were these that sometimes there was an experience 
of surprise and pleasure on his part. 

"I tell you, Phemie," he said one day, "you 
are most awfully clever to have seen that." 

The blood rushed to her cheeks in the joy, the 
triumph, of his commendation. Pride, the love of 
preeminence, the possession of worthy endowment, 
— these sentiments were her soul, the ethereal 
essence of her life. She had no definite ambition ; 
she had no definite mental paths. She had groped 
in the primeval wildernesses of mind, as if there 
had been no splendid line of pioneers who had 
blazed out a road for all the centuries to come. 



214 THE JUGGLER. 

In the midst of his utter idleness, in the turmoil 
of his troublous thoughts, this review of the litera- 
ture that had been dear to him was at first a re- 
source and a distraction, and later it became a 
luxury. He began to be only less eager than she 
to resume the discourse where it had left off. 
Thus it was that he joined her in sundry domestic 
duties, so that while mechanically busy they might 
be mentally free, in Scotland, or Norway, or Rus- 
sia, or on the wild, wild seas. He was wont to go 
with her to drive up the cows ; and surely never 
in such company did the old fancies tread this New 
World soil, — knights in armor and ladies fair and 
all the glittering hordes of chivalry crowding the 
narrow aisles of the wilderness, and following hard 
the fairies and demons of many an antique legend. 
Once on the summit of a crag he looked out upon 
the world beyond the Cove, for the first time 
since his arrival here. Fair, oh, very fair it was, 
in the yellow haze of the declining springtide sun- 
shine, and far it stretched in promissory lengths, 
like all the vague possibilities of the future. Paral- 
lel with the massive green heights near at hand ran 
others growing amethystine of hue, showing many 
a gray cliff and many a gleam of silver mountain 
streams winding amongst the divergent spurs and 
ravines and coves. Beyond lay the levels of a great 
valley, and here were brown stretches of ploughed 
fields, and here gleamed the emerald of winter 
wheat, and here swept the splendid free curves of 
the Tennessee River, flowing the color of burnished 



THE JUGGLER. 215 

copper, so did the sunlight idealize the hue of the 
spring floods, between the keen high tints of the 
green foliage fringing its banks where the rocks 
failed. To the north a thousand minor ridges 
continued the parallelism which marks the great 
mountain system, and these were azure of an in- 
describably exquisite and languorous shade, rising 
into a silver haze that was itself like an illumination. 
And where it seemed that the limits of vision 
must surely be reached, the abrupt steeps of the 
eastern side of Walden's Ridge, stretching diago- 
nally across the whole breadth of the State, shad- 
owy purple, reflecting naught of the sunset, rose 
against the west, and there the sun,, all alive with 
scarlet fire, was tending downward, with only one 
vermilion flake of a cloud in all the blue and 
pearly-green and amber crystal sky. He paused 
on the verge of the cliff and gazed at it all, while 
she stood and looked expectantly at him. Perhaps 
with her woman's intuition she divined that this 
moment was in some sort a crisis in his mind. 
She was inexplicably agitated, breathless. But as 
he gazed his heart did not stir the faster. Here 
and there he marked a brilliant slant of glitter 
where a steeple caught the sun, now to the north 
and again to the southwest, beyond a space a hand 
might seem to cover, but which he knew measured 
fifty or a hundred miles. These indicated towns. 
There beat the fvill pulses of the life he had left; 
and still at sight of them his heart did not plunge. 
He looked down at her with an expression in his 



216 THE JUGGLER. 

eyes all new to them and which she could not 
interpret. Nevertheless it set her happy heart 
a-flutter. Nothing- was said of the view, and with 
one accord they sat down on the verge of the cliff. 
His boots dangled over the sheer spaces a thousand 
feet below, but he could not repress a shiver at 
her attitude as she leaned over the brink of the 
precipice. 

"I wish you would move farther back from the 
edge," he said, with a corrugated brow. "I am 
afraid you may slip over, you are so little, and " — 

"That would put an e-end to the readings 
mighty quick," she said, as she still leaned over to 
peer down at the tops of the trees in the valley, 
and he turned sick and dizzy at her very gesture. 
He hardly dared to speak lest an unconsidered 
word might flutter her nerves and cause her to 
lose her hold. She had no intention of thus teas- 
ing his vicarious fright, but drew back presently 
to a safe distance. "Wouldn't it?" she asked, 
recurring to her remark as she executed this ma- 
noeuvre. 

"You mean if you shoidd slip over into this 
dreadful abyss? I should never, never have the 
heart to read another word as long as I should 
live!" he protested. 

He caught the look of exultant joy in her sur- 
prised and widely opened eyes for one moment, 
and then she turned them discreetly on the splen- 
did vastness of that great landscape in its happiest 
mood. He realized that she had no difficulty in 



THE JUGGLER. 217 

comprehending the obvious inference. Her expe- 
rience as a rural beauty and belle heretofore had 
doubtless served to acquaint her with the hyper- 
bole of a lover's language. There were Haines 
and Ormsby within his own knowledge, and he 
could not guess how many suitors hitherto, — con- 
found them all! he muttered as he thought of 
them. He had not intended to win her heart. In 
view of her feeling for Owen Haines he had not 
deemed it possible. With the suspicion, which he 
would fain call realization, for it had all the im- 
portunacy of hope, he experienced a rush of ela- 
tion, of soft delight, which amazed him, while it 
almost swept him off his feet. Had not he too 
fallen in love during his "readings"? — for thus 
they both called his recitals. He knew that he 
had only to look into her eyes to make his heart 
flutter; but then it was a susceptible heart and 
easily stirred. She had grown dear to him in 
many ways, and he had learned this even when he 
did not dream of other result of their companion- 
shi}) than the broadcast impression that he lingered 
here for her sake. He began to strive to separate 
his ideal of womanhood from those merely arbi- 
trary values which fashion and artificial life be- 
stow. Is it a French man milliner only who .es- 
tablishes the criterion of beauty? He had but to 
glance at the face and form beside him. She was 
beautiful; she was good; she was of a singularly 
strong and individual character ; her natural mind 
was quick and retentive and discerning, and of a 



218 THE JUGGLER. 

remarkable aptness. She was so endowed with a 
keen perception of real excellence that knowledge 
had but to open its doors to her, for she possessed 
as a gift the capacity of worthy choice. She loved 
with spontaneous affection those things which other 
people are trained to love; she seized on the best 
of her own devout accord, unaware of aught of 
significance save her own preference. She could 
easily acquire all he could teach her. With her 
quick grasp and greed of learning there Avould 
soon be little disparity. He began to meditate on 
the arbitrary methods of appraisement in the 
world. How sadly do we richly rate, not our own 
preference, but that which is valued by others: 
hence the vyings, the heart-burnings, the ignoble 
strife, the false pride, of many mundane miseries. 
He knew her real identity. Her nature would 
befit any station. Her beauty, — even the refer- 
ence to the immutable standards of his own world 
could avail no detraction here, — it was preemi- 
nent. Having lived his life in one sphere, why 
should he, being dead to it forever, let its rigid 
conventionalities follow him into his new world? 
As to the coming years and the monotony of 
rounding out a long life in this narrow circuit, let 
the coming years take thought for themselves. 
For a moment the words pressed to his lips. Then 
he realized that this was no ordinary self-commit- 
tal. To pledge himself to marry a woman of her 
degree in life — an ignorant mountain girl of an 
inexpressible rusticity and lack of sophistication, 



THE JUGGLER. 219 

as far removed from a comprehension of the con- 
ventions in which he had been reared and the cul- 
tivated ideals still dear to him as if she were a 
denizen of a different planet — was a serious step 
indeed; he winced, and was silent. 

This day marked a change. When they reached 
home the sky was red, and a white star was alight 
in the zenith. Spot stood lowing at the bars, and 
Mrs. Sims's dimples deeply indented her plump- 
ness as she addressed the young people in pre- 
tended reproof. 

"I sent you-uns arter Spot. From now on I 
be a-goin' ter sen' Spot arter you-uns." 

Summoned by the sound of her chuckle out came 
briskly Tubal Cain, venomous with fault-finding 
and repining. "Hyar ye be, Euphemy Sims," he 
said, more harshly than he had ever before spoken 
to her, "a-foolin' away yer time huntin' fur a cow 
what war standin' at the bars sence long 'fore sun- 
down, ez sensible ez grown folks, an' Pa'son Tynes 
a-settin' an' a-settin' hyar waitin' ter see ye." 

Euphemia answered with an affronted coolness: 
"Pa'son Tynes? An' what do I keer ter see 
Pa'son Tynes fur? " 

"Pa'son Tynes keer ter see you-uns, Phemie: 
that 's what makes yer dad hop roun' like a pea 
on a hot shovel," said Mrs. Sims. 

Royce began to have an illuminating sense that 
"Daddy Sims" was flattered to have so distin- 
guished a guest as Pa'son Tynes, with his wide- 
spread oratorical fame, awaiting by the hour Eu- 



220 THE JUGGLER. 

phemia's return, and tliat he could hardly forgive 
his idol that these precious moments had been 
wasted in the juggler's society. Royce perceived 
the farcical antithesis of the theory which he had 
been arguing all the afternoon, and realized that 
there are arbitrary gradations in less sophisti- 
cated society than that on which he had predi- 
cated the proposition. He felt very small in- 
deed, being thus called upon to look up to Pa 'son 
Tynes. 

"I dunno what he be wantin' ter see me fur," 
said Euphemia, still with the resentment of being 
esteemed dilatory, and evidently apjirehending a 
purpose in the call other than the enjoyment of 
her conversation. 

"Me nuther," chuckled Mrs. Sims; "you-uns 
bein' sech a outdacious ugly gal ez all the men- 
folks be compelled ter shade thar eyes whenst ye 
kem about." 

Mrs. Sims's vicarious coquetry was unblush- 
ingly fickle. She did not wait for Euphemia to 
be quit of the old love before she was on with the 
new. Nay, in the very presence of the superseded 
swain she prospectively and speculatively flirted 
with his problematic successor. 

"A plague on all fat old women! " thought the 
juggler, ill at ease and out of countenance. 

"I hev got my religion," said Euphemia stiffly, 
her pride revolting at the idea that perchance 
Pa'son Tynes had presumed her to be still uncon- 
verted, and that his call was pastoral. "I dunno 



THE JUGGLER. 221 

what he kin be a-comin' pesterin' round about me 
fur." 

"Waal," said lier mother, still chuckling, " he be 
a-comin' agin ter-inorrer ter see you-uns. He axed 
me special ter keep ye home ter view him — no, 
that was n't the way ; he knows thar 's better things 
ter be viewed in this world 'n a lantern-jawed, 
tallow-faced preacher-man, though from thar own 
account thar '11 be a power o' nangels featured like 
that in heaven — he axed me special ter keep ye 
home till he could view you-ims ! " And Mrs. 
Sims's chuckle of enjoyment broke from its habit- 
ual bounds and into the jolliest of obese laughter. 
It might have been termed infectious had any one 
present been sufficiently in spirits to be suscep- 
tible to its influence. The juggler was discon- 
certed and strangely cast down ; Euphemia, doubt- 
ful, antagonistic, prophetically affronted; and old 
Tubal Cain's interest still hinged on the topics 
of the conversation during the several hours while 
he had borne the parson somewhat weary comj)any. 

" He hev hed great grace in the pertracted meet- 
in'," her father rattled on, still flustered by the 
occurrence. "He hev converted fifteen sinners; 
some hardened cases, too. An' he hev preached 
wunst a day reg'lar, an' sometimes twict." 

"Let him go preach some mo', then," retorted 
Euphemia, vaguely resentful. 

She was silent during the serving of supper, 
carrying her head high, with her cheeks flushed 
and her eyes alight. Royce's glance forbore to 



222 THE JUGGLER. 

follow her. He ate little, and with a downcast, 
thoughtful mien he found his pipe after supper 
and took it out upon the rocky slope that led to 
the river. The uaoon was up; long, glamourous 
slants of light lay athwart the Cove ; the shadows 
of the pines were dense along the slope, but 
through their fringed branches the light filtered 
like a shower of molten silver. The river was 
here touched with a crystalline glitter, and here 
a lustrous darkness told of its shaded depths. 
Looking across the levels of the Cove, one had a 
sense of the dew in the glister and sparkle of the 
humid leaves. Above all rose the encompassing 
mountains, imposing, dark, and stern. The little 
log cabin with the swaying hopvines and the win- 
dow flaringly alight, and the glittei'ing reflection 
so far in the swift current below, had its idyllic 
suggestions in the moonlight, but he was not alive 
to the interests of the picturesque in humble envi- 
ronment, and had no fibre that responded to the 
enthusiasm of the genre painter. He looked toward 
the house not to mark how the silver-gray hue of 
its weathered logs was heightened by the smooth 
effect of the moonbeams. He did not even feign 
to care that one of the clay-and-stick chimneys 
leaning from the wall was so awry against the sky 
as to give a positive value of individuality in com- 
posing; what it did in regard to the proper emis- 
sion of smoke was of no consequence, since it so 
served the aixy designs of the possible painter. 
He approved of the cant of the roof no more than 



THE JUGGLER. 223 

if he had been an architectural precisian. He 
looked with all his eyes for what he presently saw, 
— a shadowy figure stole out and sat down on the 
step of the passage and gazed disconsolately, as he 
fancied, up at the moon. 

"Euphemia, come down here," he called in a 
low voice. 

She started, stared out into the mingled shadow 
and sheen with dilated eyes; then, as he advanced 
she rose and went down toward him. 

As they stood there together, the girl looked out 
from the shadow of the tree above them at the 
blended dew and glimmer, and he looked imperi- 
ously down at her. 

"See here, Phemie, why is that man coming to 
see you to-morrow? " 

"I dunno," she responded vaguely. 

"Ah, but you guess;" he caught both her 
hands. "Tell me why you think he is coming." 

She lifted her eyes to his, which had a con- 
straining quality for her. "He be kemin' ter see 
me — 'bout — 'bout Owen Haines — him — him 
ez prayed fur the power — I reckon. They be 
mighty close friends." 

He gave a short laugh of ridicule. 

She could not join in his mirth. Only so short 
a time ago its cause had been the tragedy of the 
world to her. She could hardly bring herself to 
admit even to herself that now, scarcely three 
weeks later, she cared as little for it as if it had 
never been. But her world had changed. How 



224 THE JUGGLER. 

it had developed! There were new countries; 
strange peoples had been, discovered ; a marvelous 
scope of emotion had been evolved. Romance had 
unfolded its wondrous page. She had seen Poetry 
trim its pinions and wing its flight. She had lived 
a new life ; she was a changeling. Where was her 
old self? Her fancied love for the young reli- 
gionist, her wounded pride for his sake, her scorch- 
ing, fiery compassion for her own — all had fled. 
She remembered herself in these emotions as if she 
were another being. She could hardly pity Owen 
Haines. If he did not care for the fleer of ridi- 
cule, why shovdd she ? For since — she had lived 
an enchanted life. 

"What will he want of you? " demanded Royce 
gravely. 

She faltered. She feared Tynes and his powers 
of argument. She dreaded, not being convinced, 
but the rigors of the contest. And if Owen Haines 
should, as a sacrifice to love, agree to relinquish 
his "praying fur the power," she dreaded the 
renewal of their old status of "keepin' comp'ny." 

"He will want me ter take Owen Haines back." 

"But you wouldn't, Phemie, you wouldn't?" 
urged Royce breathlessly. 

"He mought gin up prayin' fur the power. I 
turned him off fur that," she hesitated. 

Royce 's scheme was complete. AU the Cove 
and the mountain regarded him as a dangler after 
Euphemia Sims. He could feign a hopeless jeal- 
ousy. He could hold aloof for a time, and the 



THE JUGGLER. 225 

old status would doubtless readjust itself with the 
ease and security imparted by habit. He had 
gone as far as he had ever planned. Now he 
could leave the rest to chance. 

But if the life here had afforded so arid a pro- 
spect heretofore, how could he contemplate it with- 
out Euphemia ? His very speech no other creature 
could understand. He felt that he would be as 
isolated as if he were on a desert island, and he 
had a fiery impatience of time, — the years that 
were coming seemed such long years. He had 
never been more in earnest in his life, as he looked 
down into her beautiful illumined face. 

"But you will not, Euphemia," he said, slip- 
ping his arm around her waist. "You don't love 
him." 

Beyond a start, half surprise and half coyness, 
she had not moved. 

"Tell me — you care nothing for him? " 

"Not now," she faltered. And she felt anew 
a pang for her lack of constancy. 

He revolted at the partial admission with all a 
lover's insistence on preeminence. "Never — 
never! You cowM n't care for such a fool. And 
he doesn't love you, or he would have given up 
that folly at once — or anything you wished." 

Even now he hesitated. The breeze swayed the 
branches above them, and all the draping pendent 
wild grapevines that clung about the tree were 
suddenly astir. The circle of dark shadow in 
which they stood was inlaid with silver glintings 



226 THE JUGGLER. 

as the moonlight struck through the foliage; the 
soft radiance fell full in her eyes. 

"/ would give up all the world for you," he 
cried impulsively, "because I love you! " 

She drew back a trifle, and looked over her 
shoulder into the glittering idealization of the 
familiar scenes of her life in the glamours of the 
moonlight and of love. She heard the low dryadic 
song of the leaves; she heard the beating of her 
own heart. 

"Tell me that you love me, Euphemia," he 
pleaded. "Tell me that." 

Amidst all the joy in her face there was a flash 
of triumph. She was withdrawing her hands from 
his, and the realization how like she was to women 
of a higher sphere, despite her limitations, came 
to him with a certain surprise. No sooner did 
she feel her power than she had the will to wield 
it. The humble little rustic was expressed only in 
her outer guise. No finished coquette could have 
given him a more bewildering broadside of beau- 
tiful eyes as she said, joyously laughing, "What 
makes you ask such impossible questions ? " 

The phrase was borrowed of him, in his frequent 
despair of elucidating the whole scheme of civiliza- 
tion to her ignorance, in their readings. He could 
not laugh when it was so dexterously turned on 
himself. "Tell me," he persisted earnestly, "tell 
me, Phemie — or I '11 — I '11 " — the assertion had 
little humility, but he divined its effectiveness — 
"I '11 go away, and never come back again." 



THE JUGGLER. 227 

She was still laughing, but he marked that she 
no longer drew back. "Do you have to be told 
everything f " she quoted anew from his remon- 
strances because of her catechistic insistence. 
"Can't you see through anything without having 
it point-blank? " with his own impatient intonation. 

He allowed himself to be decoyed into a hasty 
smile. "And you '11 send that fellow to the right- 
about to-morrow?" he urged gravely. 

"Oh, I '11 be glad enough ter git rid of him! " 
she cried, in the exti*emity of her relief. 

He realized with a momentary qualm that the 
new situation must be avowed openly to justify 
the position which Euphemia would sustain in 
case Owen Haines should offer to relinquish, as a 
sacrifice to love, the pernicious i3ractice of "pray- 
in' fur the power" in public. He recognized this 
step as a certain riveting of his chains ; yet had he 
not been eager but a moment ago to assume them? 
And even now, as he looked down into her face, 
radiant with that joyous sense of supremacy in his 
heart, and seeming to him the most beautiful he 
had ever seen, the most tender, as it responsively 
looked up to his, he wondered that his untoward 
fate had so relented as to bestow upon him, in his 
forlorn exile, this creature, so delicately endowed, 
so choicely gifted, that even his alien estimate of 
values wrought no discord in the simple happiness 
that had come to him. 

And it was he who revealed to Jane Ann Sims 
the altered state of things when the two went pre- 



228 THE JUGGLER. 

sently back to the little cabin on the slope. There 
she sat in bulky oblivion of the things of this 
world, and especially the dish -pan. Her specta- 
cles were awry on her nodding head. The dish- 
towel was limp in her nerveless hand. The tallow 
dip was guttering in the centre of the table, and 
about it the moths circled in fond delusions, re- 
gardless of the winged cinders that lay, now still, 
and now with a quiver of departing life, on the 
cloth. She made a spasmodic offer to resign the 
dish-towel to Euphemia, waving it mechanically 
at her with a fat, dimpled hand and a gesture of 
renunciation; but the girl, all unallured, passed 
without a word into the shed-room beyond, and 
the juggler sat down on the opposite side of the 
table with one elbow on it as he looked steadily 
across at Mrs. Sims's face, which was all lined 
with the creases of fat that were usually dimples. 
She had roused into that half -dazed condition char- 
acteristic of the sudden and unwelcome termination 
of the sleep of fatigue, and the tallow dip swayed 
reduplicated before her eyes like a chandelier. 
Mentally she seemed no clearer of perception. 
Royce had realized her maternal fondness for him, 
ungratefully requited, and he could not altogether 
reconcile this with the agitated and alarmed mien 
with which she received his disclosure. 

"Marry Phemie!" she exclaimed in a sort of 
drowsy affright, as if her mental capacities had not 
yet laid hold on something that had roused her 
more alert apprehensions. 



THE JUGGLER. 229 

He was irritated for a moment. He knew in 
his secret soul that he forswore much, overlooked 
much, bestowed much, in this mad resolution, and 
this knowledge, quiescent under the immediate 
influence of the girl's beauty and charm and his 
loneliness, became tumultuously assertive in the 
society of Mrs. Sims. 

"Why not? I love her, and I want to marry 
her. Is there anything so astonishing in that?" 

" Laws-a-massy, no, honey!" Mrs. Sims sput- 
tered, her eyelids faltering before the myriad- 
flamed tallow dip. She apprehended his rising 
wrath, and, somnambulistically waving her hand, 
seemed to seek to appease it. "Mighty nigh every 
young fool ez ever seen her sets vip the same 
chune. 'T ain't astonishin' — but — honey " — 
she looked at him with sleepy admonition, still 
waving her hand— "don't talk 'bout sech so 
brazen an' loud." Then sinking her voice to a 
husky whisper that coukl have been heard in South 
America, "Shet that thar door ahint ye. Tubal 
Cain be asleep in thar." Her gesture, indicating 
the door, was accompanied by a premonitory jerk 
of her body which usually preceded rising. 

"Don't disturb yourself, I beg," said Eoyce, 
still nettled. 

He leaned back in his chair, and catching the 
door by the latch brought it to with a brisk bang. 
Mrs. Sims pursed up her mouth with a warning 
hiss imposing silence to preserve the gentle slum- 
bers of old Tubal Cain, and neither noticed that 



230 THE JUGGLER. 

the latch had failed to catch, and that the door, 
although apparently closed, stood slightly ajar. 

" Phemie says — at least she gives me to under- 
stand that my affection is returned," Royce went 
on, in better humor. 

"I hope she ain't tellin' no lies 'bout'n it this 
time, ennyhow," said Mrs. Sims waggishly; and 
it seemed to Royce that he was cai3able of singular 
temerity when he had risked the perils of seriously 
falling in love by simulating the tender jaassion in 
any instance in which Mrs. Sims was to be con- 
sidered, however remotely. To be good-natured 
in ridicule by no means implies good nature in 
being ridiculed. 

"You have a right to say anything you like, I 
suppose, about your own daughter," he rejoined 
angrily. "She doesn't look like a liar. For my 
part, I believe her." 

" Shucks ! Shucks ! " Mrs. Sims shook a mildly 
admonitory head at him. "I 'm jes' funnin'. An' 
yit I kin 'member tellin' Tubal Cain things corn- 
sider'ble short o' the truth whenst I war a young 
gal like EujDhemy, an' he war a-sparkin' round." 

The young man looked uneasily out of the win- 
dow. Could time really work such metamorphoses 
as these ? Had she ever been young and lissome 
and soft-eyed and fair, and was Euphemia to grow 
old thus? 

Perhaps it was well for the broken snatch of 
Love's young dream that there against the dark- 
ness he suddenly saw the bending boughs of an 



THE JUGGLER. 231 

elder bush all whitely abloom, and among them, 
the fairest blossom of all, Enphemia's face, half 
touched with the moonlight, yet distinct in the 
radiance that came from the candle within, smiling 
upon him as she played the eavesdropper, her dim- 
pled elbows on the window-sill and her fair hair 
blown back in the wind. 

"Nothing was said about it till this evening," 
he went on, his satisfaction restored in an instant, 
"and I thought it was only the fair thing to let 
you and Mr. Sims know; you have both been so 
kind since I have been here." 

Mrs. Sims's preliminary apprehension, which 
she seemed to have forgotten, was once more 
aghast upon her face. She raised a warning fore- 
finger, and she spoke in her husky penetrating 
whisper: "Don't you-uns say nare word ter Tubal 
Cain Sims. Leave him ter me. I '11 settle him." 

" Why not? " asked the young man, alert to any 
menace, liowever remote. 

Mrs. Sims knitted her brows in embarrassment. 
"Waal," she said, composing herself to divulge 
the truth so far as she knew it, since no polite 
subterfuge was handy, "he air cantankerous, an' 
quar'lsome, an' hard-headed, an' powerful per- 
verse. An' he 'pears ter be sot agin ye, kase, I 
reckon, I like ye, — me an' Phemie, though Phe- 
mie never tuk no notice o' ye in this worl' till 
'bout three weeks ago whenst ye ondertook ter set 
up ter her so constant. Ye hev witched that gal; 
ye jes' made her fall in love with ye, whether or no." 



232 THE JUGGLER. 

The juggler laughed at this, casting a bright 
glance at the dusky aperture of the window where 
the white blossoms all stirred by the wind seemed 
to be leaning on the sill and eavesdropping too. 
They might not have all been so happily at ease 
had they known that, close by the door, still 
slightly ajar, and awakened by the bang which the 
juggler had dealt it, lay old Tubal Cain Sims, 
grimly listening to this conversation. 

"I can't agree to that," said Royce, after a 
moment's reflection. He was certainly nothing 
of a prig, but he had his own views of honor, and 
they controlled him. "This is Mr. Sims's house; 
and I was received into it first as a guest, and it 
is as a privilege that I have been allowed to re- 
main. I can't make love to any man's daughter, 
under these circumstances, on the sly." 

"But s'jjose he won't agree — an' the critter is 
ez co?^trary ez — ez" — Comparisons failed Mrs. 
Sims, and she could only shake her head warn- 
ingly. 

"Oh well, everything having been aboveboard, 
I'd take the girl and elope!" cried the juggler, 
his eyes alight at the mere prospective fanning of 
the breeze of adventure. "Being an educated 
man, Mrs. Sims, I could make a living for myself 
and my wife in a dozen different ways, in any of 
these little towns about here. Why — what" — 

Mrs. Sims, bulkily rising, had almost overturned 
the table and the crockery upon him. Her fat 
face was pallid and flabby, and it shook as she 



TEE JUGGLER. 233 

gazed, speechless and wild-eyed, at him. Her 
puffy hand besought him in mute entreaty before 
she could find words to blurt out, "Good Gawd 
A'mighty, John Leonard, don't lay yer tongue 
ter sech ez that! Don't s'picion the word ez ye 'd 
steal my darter away from me. It would kill me 
— an' I hev stood yer frien' from the fust, even 
whenst they all made out ez ye war in league with 
Satan an' gin over ter witchments. It would kill 
me, bodaciously! Don't ye steal my one leetle 
lamb — thar 's plenty o' gals in the worl', ready 
an' willin' — steal them — steal them! I want 
my darter ter live hyar with me, married an' sin- 
gle, — ter live hyar with me. We ain't got but 
the one lone, lorn leetle chile. Don't — don't " — 
The tears stood in all her dimples and she was 
speechless. 

"•Well, upon my word!" exclaimed Royce in- 
dignantly, but pausing, with that care which he 
bestowed upon all manner of possessions represent- 
ing property, however meagre, to right the table 
and restore the imperiled crockery. "What sort 
of a frenzy is this, Mrs. Sims? Am I going to 
run away with your daughter? Have I shown 
any symptoms of decamping? Strikes me I have 
come to stay. I make a point of telling you — 
because I know that I am not here under your roof 
for any small profit to you, but as a matter of 
kindness and courtesy — of telling you all about it 
within the hour that I know it myself, and this is 
my reward! " 



234 THE JUGGLER. 

Poor Mrs. Sims, having sunk back in her chair, 
and the young man still remaining standing, could 
only look up at him with piteous contrition and 
anxious appeal. 

"I hope Mr. Sims won't give me any reason to 
contemplate elopement. Was n't he willing for 
his daughter to marry Owen Haines, they having 
been ' keepin' comp'ny,' as I understand?" 

She silently nodded. 

"My Lord! what have I come to!" Royce 
cried, lifting his hands, then letting them fall to 
his sides, as if calling on heaven and earth to wit- 
ness the absurdity of the situation. "I think I 
might be considered at least as desirable 2i parti 
as that pious monkey praying for the power ! " He 
gave that short laugh of his which so expressed 
ridicule, turned, secured the end of tallow candle 
placed for him on the shelf, and, lighting it, as- 
cended the rickety stairs to the roof-room. 

The suggestion of an elopement was not alto- 
gether unacceptable to him. If there should be 
any objection urged against him, — and he could 
hardly restrain his mirth at the idea, — an elope- 
ment into some other retired cove in these regions 
of nowhere would result not infelicitously, afford- 
ing still further disguise and an adequate reason 
for both him and his wife to be strangers in a 
strange land. "A runaway match would account 
for everything: so bring on your veto and wel- 
come! " he said to himself. 

Next morning, however, he found his disclosure 



THE JUGGLER. 235 

to Tubal Cain Sims postponed. His host had left 
the house before dawn, and although he did not 
return for any of the three meals Mrs. Sims felt 
no uneasiness, it being a practice of Tubal Cain 
Sims's, in order to assert his independence of pet- 
ticoat government, to deal much in small mysteries 
about his affairs. All day — her equanimity re- 
stored by the half -jocular, half-affectionate raillery 
of Royce, who had roused himself to the realiza- 
tion that it was well to continue friends with her 
— she canvassed her husband's errand, and guessed 
at the time of his probable return, and speculated 
upon his reasons for secrecy. Night did not bring 
him, and Royce, who had been now laughing at 
Mrs. Sims's various theories, and now wearying 
of their futile inconsistencies, began to share her 
curiosity. 

It was the merest curiosity. He did not dream 
that he was the chief factor in his host's schemes 
and absence. 



IX. 

Tubal Cain Sims still continued to harbor the 
theory that the juggler's unexplained and lingering 
stay in Etowah Cove betokened that he sought 
immunity here from the consequences of crime, 
and that he was a fugitive from justice. In no 
other way could he interpret those strange words, 
" — But the one who lives — for his life ! — his 
life! — his life! "cried out from troubled dreams 
in the silence of the dark midnight. Although 
this view had been shared by the lime-burners 
when first he had sought to enlist their preju- 
dice, for he would fain rid his house of this ill- 
flavored association, of late their antagonism had 
flagged. Only Peter Knowles seemed to abide 
by their earlier impression, but Peter Knowles 
was now absorbed heart and soul in burning 
lime, as the time for its use was drawing near. 
Sims began to understand the luke-warmness of 
the others when he noted the interest of the young 
man in his beautiful daughter : they deemed him 
now merely a lover. This discovery had come but 
lately to Sims, for he was of a slow and plodding 
intelligence, and hard upon it followed the revela- 
tions he had overheard through the open door the 
previous evening. It was evidently an occasion for 



THE JUGGLER. 237 

haste. While he loitered, this stranger, encour- 
aged by the vicarious coquetry of Jane Ann Sims, 
might marry Euphemia; and when the juggler 
should be haled to the bar of justice for his crimes, 
the Cove would probably perceive in the dispensa- 
tion only a judgment upon her parents for having 
made an idol of their own flesh and blood. 

He realized, as many another man has done, 
that in extreme crises, involving risk, quondam 
friendships are but as broken reeds, and he was 
leaning stoutly only upon his own fealty to his 
own best interests, as he jogged along on, his old 
brown mare, with her frisky colt at her heels, 
down the red clay roads of the cove, and through 
rugged mountain passes into still other coves, on 
his way to Colbury, the county town. His heart 
burned hot within him against Jane Ann Sims 
when he recalled her advice to the man to say 
nothing to him, the head of the house and the 
father of the girl! She'd settle him! Would 
she, indeed? And he relished with a grim zest, 
as a sort of reparation, the fright she had suffered 
at the bare possibility of an elopement. Then this 
recollection, reacting on his own heart, set it all 
a-plunging, as he toiled on wearily in the hot sun, 
lest this disaster might chance during his absence, 
and he found himself leaning appealingiy, for- 
lornly, on the honor of the very man whom his 
mission was to ruin if he could. It was he who 
had refused to dispense with the father's consent 
could it be obtained, and the perfidious Jane Ann 



238 THE JUGGLER. 

Sims had counseled otherwise; he who had taken 
note of hosjDitality and courtesy, — much of which, 
in truth, had been mere seeming. More than once 
it almost gave Sims pause to reflect to whom he 
was indebted for any show of consideration. He 
had, however, but one daughter. This plea, he 
felt, might serve to excuse unfounded suspicion, 
and make righteous a breach of hospitality, and 
even justify cruelty. "One darter! " he often 
said to himself as he went along, all unaware that 
if he had had six his cares, his solicitude, his 
paternal affection, would have been meted out six- 
fold, so elastic is the heart to the strain upon its 
resources. 

For this cause, despite his softened judgment 
toward the juggler, he did not flinch when he 
reached Colbury, and made his way across the 
"Square," where every eye seemed to his anxious 
consciousness fixed upon him, as if attributing to 
him some nefarious designs on the liberty of an 
innocent man. But in reality the town folks of 
Colbury were far too sophisticated in their own 
esteem to accord the slightest note to an old codger 
from the mountains, — a region as remote to the 
majority, save now and then for a glimpse of an 
awe-stricken visitor from the backwoods, as the 
mythical island of Atlantis. For such explorations 
into the world at large as the ambitious citizens of 
Colbury adventured led them not into the scorned 
rural wilds comprehensively known to them as 
" 'way up in the Cove." 



THE JUGGLER. 239 

Tubal Cain Sims had been here but twice be- 
fore: once when there was a political rally early 
after the war, and later as a witness for the de- 
fense in a case of murder. The crowded, con- 
fused, jostling political experience still thronged 
unintelligibly the retina of his mind's eye, but 
order and quiet distinguished the glimpse vouch- 
safed him of the workings of justice. He had 
evolved a great respect for judicial methods, and 
he felt something like a glow of pride to see the 
court-house still standing so spacious and stately, 
as it seemed to him, within its inclosures, the sur- 
rounding grass green and new, and the oak boughs 
clustering above the columns of the porch. He 
was not aware how long he stood and gazed at it, 
his eyes alight, his cheek flushed. If the question 
had been raised, he would have known, of course, 
that the Juggernaut car of justice had held steadily 
on its inexorable way through all the years that 
had since intervened, and that his individual lack 
of a use for it had not banished it from the earth ; 
but Tubal Cain was not a man of speculation, 
and it smote him with a sort of gratified surprise 
to see the court-house on its stanch stone founda- 
tions as it was in the days when he and it con- 
served so intimate a relation. There were two 
or three lawyers on the steps or passing in at the 
gate, but he eyed these members of the tribe 
askance. The value which he placed on counsel 
was such confidence as he might repose in a shoot- 
ing-iron with a muzzle at both ends, — as liable to 



240 ~ THE JUGGLER. 

go off in one direction as in the otlier; and thus it 
was that, with a hitch of the reins, he reminded 
himself anew of his errand, and took his way down 
the declivity of a straggling little street, where 
presently the houses grew few and small, dwin- 
dling first to shabby tumble-down old cottages, 
then to sundry dilapidated blacksmith shops, be- 
yond which stretched a rocky untenanted space, as 
if all habitation shrunk from neighboring the little 
jail which stood alone between the outer confines 
of the town and the creek. 

Here also he came to a halt, looking at the surly 
building with recognizing eyes. And to it too 
these years had not been vacant. All the time 
of his absence, in the far-away liberties of the 
mountains, with the unshackled wind and the free 
clouds and the spontaneous growths of the earth 
out of its own untrammeled impulse, this grim 
place had been making its record of constraints, 
and captives, and limits, and locks, and longing 
bursting hearts, and baffled denied eyes, and 
yearning covetings of freedom, the bitterness of 
which perhaps no free creature can know. Surely, 
surely, these darkening elements of the moral 
atmosphere had turned the bricks to their dingy 
hue. The barred windows gave on vague black 
interiors. A cloud was in the air above, with now 
and then a mutter of thunder, and the sullen jail 
lay in a shadow, and the water ran black in the 
green-fringed creek at the foot of the hill, while 
behind him at its summit, where the street inter- 



THE JUGGLER. 241 

sected the open square, the sunlight fell in such 
golden suffusions that a clay-bank horse with his 
rider motionless against the blue sky beyond might 
have seemed an equestrian statue in bronze, com- 
memorating the valiance of some bold cavalry 
leader. Tubal Cain wondered to see the jail so 
still and solitary; and where could be the man 
whom he had pictured sitting in all the luxury of 
possession on the front doorsteps, smoking his 
pipe ? 

This man of his imagination was the sheriff of 
the county, who did not avail himself of his privi- 
lege to appoint a jailer, but turned the keys him- 
self and dwelt in his stronghold. He was of an 
over-exacting cast of mind. He could never be- 
lieve a prisoner secure unless with his own hands 
he had drawn the bolts. On account of the great 
vogue attained by various crimes at this period, 
and the consequent overcrowding of the prisons 
throughout the State, a considerable number of 
captured moonshiners had been billeted on the 
Kildeer County jail while awaiting trial in the 
Federal Court, and by reason of this addition to 
his charge his vigilance was redoubled. In all the 
details of his office he carried the traits of a 
precisian, and was in some sort a thorn in the 
side of the more easy-going county officers with 
whom his official duties brought him into contact. 
Even the judge in his high estate on the bench 
was now and again nettled by the difficult ques- 
tions of punctilio with which this servant of the 



242 THE JUGGLER. 

court could contrive to invest some trifling- matter, 
and was known to incline favorably to the salutary 
theory of rotation in office, — barring, of course, 
the judicial office. But the sheriff had three minie 
balls in him which he had collected on various 
battlefields in the South; and although he had 
fought on a side not altogether popular in this 
region, they counted for him at the polls in succes- 
sive elections, without the formalities of statutory 
qualifications and with a wondrous power of redu- 
plication in the number of resulting votes. He 
was reputed of an extraordinary valor on those 
hard-contested fields where lie had found his bul- 
lets, but there were advanced occasionally caviling 
criticisms of his record on the score that, being 
incapable of originating a course of action, it 
never occurred to him to run away when his com- 
mand was ordered to advance, and that his bravery 
was simply the fixed stolidity of adhering to an- 
other man's idea in default of any ideas of his 
own. In proof of this it was cited that when 
he was among a guard detailed to hold a gin- 
house full of cotton, and the enemy surprised the 
sentinel and captured the building, he alone stood 
like a stock with his rifle still at a serene "shoul- 
der-arms," where it was ordered to be, while his 
comrades undertook a deploying evolution of their 
own invention at a mad double-quick, without a 
word of command, showing the cleanest of nimble 
heels across the country. But he was esteemed by 
these depreciators a lucky fool, for since the war, 



THE JUGGLER. 243 

having an affinity for the office of sheriff, he had 
more than once been obliged to decline to make 
the race, and lie off a term or two, because of the 
law which will not permit the office to be held by 
the same person eight years without an interval. 
His fad for being in the direct line of the enemy's 
fire had not resulted more disastrously than to 
give him some painful hospital experience; the 
balls had come to stay, and apparently the hard 
metal of his constitution served to assimilate them 
easily enough, for he was hale and hearty, and 
bade fair to live to a green old age, and they never 
made themselves heard of save at election times, 
when in effect they stuffed the ballot-box. 

Having voted for him so often, and with that 
immense estimate of the value of a single ballot 
common to the backwoodsman little conversant 
with the power of numbers. Tubal Cain Sims felt 
a possessory claim on the sheriff as having made 
him such. He stood in dismay and doubt for a 
moment, gazing at the stout closed door that 
opened, when it opened at all, directly on the de- 
scending flight of steps, without any ceremonial 
porch or other introduction to entrance; then, 
after the manner of Etowah Cove, he lifted up his 
voice in a stentorian halloo and hailed the grim 
and silent house. 

The sound seemed a spell to waken it into life. 
The echo of his shouts came back from the brick 
walls so promptly as to simulate two imperative 
voices rather than acoustic mimicry. Sudden pale 



244 THE JUGGLER. 

faces showed at the bars, wearing the inquiring 
startled mien of alarm and surprise. The rattle 
of a chain heralded the approach of a great guard- 
doff dracrsfins a block from around the corner. 
With his big bull-like head lowered and his fangs 
showing between his elastic lips, he stood fiercely 
surveying the stranger for a short time; then — 
and Tubal Cain Sims could have more readily for- 
given a frantic assault, for he had his pistol in his 
hand — the sagacious brute sat down abruptly, and 
continued to contemplate the visitor, but with a 
certain air of non-committal curiosity, evidently 
realizing that his vocation was not to deter people 
from getting into jail, but to prevent them from 
getting out. The pallid faces at the windows were 
laughing, despite the bars; and although nettled 
by the ridicule they expressed, Tubal Sims made 
bold to lift up his voice again: "Hello, Enott! 
Enott Blake! Lemme in! Lemme in, I say! 
HeUo, Enott!" 

The faces of the spectators were distended anew. 
At those windows where there was more than one, 
they were turned toward each other for the luxury 
of an exchange of winks and leers. When a face 
was alone it grinned jocular satisfaction to it- 
self, and one man, with a large red and facetious 
countenance, now and again showed a lifted hand 
smiting an unseen leg, in the extremity of solitary 
joy. The dog, with his big head still lowered and 
his drooping lips a-quiver, gave a surly growl of 
displeasure, when the colt, having somewhat recov- 



THE JUGGLER. 245 

erecl from the fatigues of its long journey, began 
to frisk nimbly, and to curvet and caracole; the 
mare turned her head anxiously about as she 
watched these gyrations. Tubal Cain glared at 
the men at the windows. They had little to laugh 
at, doubtless, but why should they so gratuitously 
laugh at him? A tide of abashed mortification 
carried the blood to his head. His stanch seK- 
respect had heretofore precluded the suspicion that 
he was ever the object of ridicule, and now his 
pride revolted at his plight; but since he could 
not get at his mockers and, inflict condign punish- 
ment, naught remained but to manfully persist in 
his course as if they were not. He dismounted, 
threw the reins over a hitching-post, advanced 
through the gate of the narrow yard, his j)istol in 
his hand for fear of the formidable dog, and as- 
cended the steps with a resolute tread. He dealt 
a resounding double-knock with the butt end of 
his shooting-iron, crying as he did so upon Enott 
Blake as a "dad -burned buzzard" to unlock the 
door or he would break it down. Suddenly it 
opened, and by the force of his expectant blow he 
fell forward into the hall; then it closed behind 
him with a bang that shook the house. 

"What does this mean?'* exclaimed an irate 
voice. "Jeemes, take his weepon." 

And albeit Tubal Sims stoutly held on to it, a 
scientific crack on the knuckles administered by 
a dajjper light-haired young man caused the stiff 
old fingers to relax and yield the pistol to the cus- 
tody of the law. 



246 THE JUGGLER. 

Tubal Sims confronted a tall, spare, vigorous 
man about fifty-five years of age, with iron-gray 
hair worn with a certain straight lank effect and 
parted far on the side, a florid complexion, and a 
bright yellowish-gray eye which delivered the kind 
of glance poj)ularly held to resemble an eagle's. 
His look was very intent as he gazed in the twilight 
of the grimy hall at Tubal Cain Sims, who began 
to feel a quiver at the lack of recognition it ex- 
pressed. To be sure. Tubal Sims knew that he 
had no acquaintance with the man, but somehow 
he had not counted on this total unresponsiveness 
to his claim upon the officer. 

"I hev voted fur you-uns fur sher'ff nine time 
out'n ten," he said, with the rancor of reproach 
for benefits conferred unworthily. 

He stood with a very large majority of the en- 
lightened citizens of the county. Enott Blake 
had been but recently reelected, but if his canvass 
were to be made anew it is barely jiossible that he 
would have fancied he might have weathered it 
without the support of this ancient adherent. His 
office was of the sort which is not compatible with 
any show of j)ersonal favor, and he resented the 
reminder of political services as an imputation. 

"Well, ye have got a sheriff that knows what 
attempted house-breaking is," he said severely. 
"And unless ye can show a good reason for try in' 
to break into that door, ye '11 find ye have got a 
sheriff that will take a power o' pains ye don't 
break out again soon.". 



THE JUGGLER. 247 

Tubal Cain's face, all wind-blown and red with 
the sun, and rugged with hard grooved wrinkles, 
and nervous with the untoward complications of 
achieving an audience with the man he had ridden 
so far to see, was shattered from the congruity of 
his gravity into a sort of fragmentary laughter out 
of keeping with the light of anxiety in his eyes. 

"Did ye ever hear of a man tryin' ter break 
inter a jail?" he demanded. 

"I caught you doin' it to the best of your abil- 
ity," returned the literal-minded sheriff. 

Tubal Cain would have felt as if he were dream- 
ing had it not been for sundiy recollections of 
stories of the matter-of-fact tendencies of the offi- 
cer which were far from reassuring. He felt that 
he could hardly have faced the situation had not 
the dapper round-visaged young deputy, whose 
blond hair curled like a baby's in tendrils on his 
red, freckled forehead, glanced up at him with a 
jocose wink as he proceeded to draw the cartridges 
from the mountaineer's shooting-iron ; the triumph 
of capture was still in his eye, while he lounged 
carelessly over the banisters of the staircase to evade 
the responsibility and labor of standing upright. 

"Own up, daddy," he cavalierly admonished 
the elder. "Tell what you were aimin' to do. 
To rescue prisoners " — his superior snorted at the 
very word — "or rob .us of our vally'bles? " The 
sheriff turned upon the deputy with a stare of in- 
quiry as if wondering what these might be ; then, 
vaguely apprehending the banter, said severely : — 



248 THE JUGGLER. 

"Cuttin' jokes about your bizness, Jeemes, so 
constant, makes me 'feard it 's a leetle bit too 
confinin' for sucli a gay bird as you. Bar-keepin' 
in a saloon would fit your build better 'n the sort 
o' bar-keepin' we do here, I 'm thinkin'." 

Enott Blake might be laughed at on occasion, 
but he had a trick of making other men as serious 
as himself when he sought to play upon their 
foibles. The blond deputy's countenance showed 
that it had another and deeper tinge of red in its 
capacity; he came to the perpendicular suddenly 
as, without lifting his eyes, he continued to revolve 
the cylinder of the pistol and to draw the car- 
tridges seriatim. He was but newly appointed, 
and zealous of the favor of his superior. 

"I dunno how I could bear up, though," he 
said, with apology in the cadence of his voice, "if 
I didn't crack a joke wunst in a while, consider- 
ing I 'm just broke into harness." 

"That's a fact," admitted the martial elder, 
visibly and solemnly placated. "Do you know 
what we were doin' while you yelled, an' capered, 
an' cut up them monkey-shines in front of the 
jail?" he demanded sternly, turning to Tubal 
Cain Sims. "We were cuttin' a man down that 
tried to hang himself." 

"Suicidin'," put in the deputy, as if making a 
nice distinction between this voluntary suspension 
and the legal execution. 

"An' we were binngin' the man to himself 
affin." 



THE JUGGLER. 249 

"He 's crazy, crazy as a loon," interpolated the 
deputy in a mutter, pulling the trigger and snap- 
ping the hammer of the empty weapon, and sight- 
ing it unpleasantly down the hall, aiming alter- 
nately at the sheriff and at Tubal Cain Sims, who 
could scarcely repress an admonition, but for awe's 
sake desisted. 

"Or more likely, simulatin' insanity," said the 
sheriff; "it's plumb epidemic nowadays 'mongst 
the crim'nals." 

"Well, he come mighty nigh lightin' out for 
a country where no vain pretenses avail," remarked 
the loquacious deputy, one eye closed, and drawing 
a very fine line from the bridge of old Sims' s nose 
with the empty pistol. 

"This is a country where they don't avail, 
either," retorted the sheriff, "not with any reason- 
able jury. And twelve men, though liable to be 
fools, ain't fools o' the same pattern. That 's the 
main thing: impanel a variety o' fools, an' the ver- 
dic' is generally horse sense. Now, sir," turning 
on Tubal Cain Sims, who could feel his hat rising 
uj) on his hair, "what do you want, anyhow?" 

"Ter git out, — that 's all; ter git out o' hyar! " 
exclaimed Tubal Sims, sickened with a ghastly 
horror of the presentment of the scene they had 
left, the walls that harbored it, the roof that shel- 
tered it. Oh for the free pure mountain air, the 
wild untrodden lengths of the mountain wilderness, 
fresh with the sun and the dew, and the vigor of 
natural growths, and the sweet scent of woodland 



250 THE JUGGLER. 

ways ! As he cast up his eyes to the high window 
above the staircase he coukl have cried out aloud 
to see the bars, and he gazed at the door in a de- 
speration that started the drops on his brow and 
brought the blood to his face, as if the intensity of 
his emotion had been some strong physical effort. 

"What did you get in here for, then?" de- 
manded the sheriff. "Most folks have to be 
fetched." 

Tubal Cain Sims's heart failed him. Could it 
be possible that he had ever designed a fate like 
this for the man who had slept under his roof; 
who had eaten his bread; who had refused to 
maintain secrecy against him ; who considered him 
and his claims, when his own, his very own, passed 
them by? He could not realize it. He refused 
to credit his cherished scheme ; he felt that if once 
away from the paralyzing sight of the place, inven- 
tion would rouse itself anew. Some other device 
would serve to rid the Cove of the man, and to 
frustrate his elopement with Euphemia. Tubal 
Sims was sure he could compass a new plan if once 
more he were free in the clear and open air. 

The eagle eye of the sheriff marked the alert 
turning of Sims's head toward the door. "What 
did you come here for, then? " he again demanded. 

With hot eyes glancing hither and thither like 
a wild thing's in a trap, Tubal Sims replied, with 
the inspiration of the moment, "I wanted ter view 
the man I hev voted fur so often an' so constant." 

Now, the sheriff, like many other great men in 



THE JUGGLER. 251 

their several places, had his vanity, and it is not 
hard to convince one who has been before the 
public eye that he fills that orb to the exclusion of 
any less worthy object. That Tubal Cain Sims 
should have journeyed fully thirty -five miles from 
the mountains to contemplate the resplendent dig- 
nity of the sheriff in his oft-resumed incumbency 
seemed possibly no disproportionate tribute to 
Enott Blake's estimate of his own merits. But 
this view, however flattering, was hardly compati- 
ble with the lordly manner in which the old moun- 
taineer had beaten upon the door of the jail, and 
the imperative tones with which he had summoned 
forth the servant of the public who owed his high 
estate to the suffrages of him aided by the likes 
of him. 

A wonderful change is wrought in the moral 
atmosphere of a man by the event of an election. 
The candidate's estate is vested by the announce- 
ment of the result. He owns his office for the 
time, and he breathes a free man. It is interest- 
ing to see how the muscles of his metaphorical 
knees straighten out, for the day of genuflection 
is over. Independence is reasserted in his eye; he 
bears himself as one who conquers by the prowess 
of his own bow and spear; and men whom he 
would fain conciliate last week need to search his 
eye for an expression they can recognize. They 
will be treated no more to that mollifying demon- 
stration, the candidate's smile. 

The defeated aspirant's once bland counte- 



252 THE JUGGLER. 

nance, however, has assumed all the contours of the 
cynic's. A bitter sort of nonchalance with a 
frequent forced laugh goes better combined with 
peanuts, if the place is not too high in the official 
scale and the candidate of no great social preten- 
sions, since the hulls can be cast off with a flouting 
gesture which aids the general implication that the 
constituency may appropriately go hang, for all 
he cares. He is not hurt, — not he! He made 
the race to oblige his friends and party, and he 
now and again throws out intimations of a bigger 
piece of pie saving for him as a reward for filling 
the breach. Meantime peanuts perforce suffice. 

Enott Blake, through much place-holding, had 
become imbued with the candidate's antagonism 
to that assumption of all the power residing in the 
voting masses common to the arrogant but impo- 
tent unit. He was never elected by any one man, 
nor through any definitely exerted political influ- 
ence. He served the people, and incidentally his 
own interest, and mighty glad they ought to be to 
get him, and this was what he felt esj^ecially after 
elections. If ever in the course of a canvass he 
had a qualm, — and it is said that the least imagi- 
native of men are capable of nightmare, — he had 
the satisfaction of calling himself a fool thereafter, 
to think less of himself than people thought of 
him, and of counting endearingly his minie balls. 
He was a rare instance of a great personal popu- 
larity, and he had no mind to abate his pretensions 
before the preposterous patronage of this old 



THE JUGGLER. 253 

mountaineer who possibly had not paid poll-tax 
for twenty years. He could no more be said to 
possess an enlightened curiosity than the hound 
trained to trail game could be accredited with an 
inquisitive interest in the natural history of the 
subject of his quest. It was only with a similar 
rudimentary instinct of the pursuit of prey that 
he felt stirring an intention to wring from the in- 
truder the real reason for this strange entrance. 

"No, no, my friend," he said, with a kindling 
of his keen eye which expressed a degree of fero- 
city, "you can't come it that-a-way on me. I 'm 
a mighty fine man, I know, but folks ain't got to 
sech a pass yet as to break into jail for a glimpse 
of me. You don't get out of that door" — he 
nodded his head at it — " till you give me a rea- 
sonable reason for your extraordinary conduc'." 

Tubal Cain Sims was silent. His hard old lips 
suddenly shut fast. His eyes gleamed with a 
dogged light. He would not speak had he no will 
to speak, and the officer should see which could 
hold out the longest at this game. He remem- 
bered how often he had hearkened to the com- 
plaints of the preternatural quality of his obstinacy 
with which Jane Ann Sims had beguiled the con- 
jugal way since, a quarter of a century ago, they 
had left the doorstep of Parson Greenought's 
house man and wife.. Surely, if it had time and 
again vanquished Jane Ann Sims, how could the 
sheriff, a mere man, abide it? He had not, how- 
ever, reckoned on certain means of compulsion 



254 THE JUGGLER. 

which were not within the power of the doughty 
contestant for domestic supremacy. 

There was no visible communication between 
the older officer and the deputy when the young 
man said appealingly, "Ye won't need handcuffs, 
Mr. Blake? Leastwise not till after we come 
from the jestice's?" 

"Handcuffs!" screeched Tubal Sims, as vio- 
lently cast out from the stronghold of his obstinate 
silence as if he had been hurtled thence by a cata- 
pult. "Ye hev got no right to handcuff me! I 
kem hyar of my own free will an' accord. I ain't 
no prisoner. Open that thardoor," he continued, 
lowering his voice to a tone of command and turn- 
ing majestically to the sheriff. "OjDen that door, 
or I '11 hev the law of ye." 

"Not till I have had the law of you," replied 
the imperturbable functionary. "But, Jeemes," 
— he turned with a disaffected aside to his young 
colleague, — "what d'ye go namin' irons for? 
'T ain't polite to talk 'bout ironin' a man old 
enough to be your father." 

The deputy looked about in vague despair. He 
had but sought the effect upon the imagination of 
the mention of shackles, and indeed his words had 
potently affected the fancy of the only man in the 
room who possessed that illusive pictorial faculty. 
The stanch old mountaineer was all a-tremble. 
What wovild Jane Ann Sims think of this? He 
might have known that this journeying abroad in 
secret and without her advice would result disas- 



THE JUGGLER. 255 

trously! What indeed would Jane Ann Sims 
think of this? 

"Open that door!" he vociferated. "Ye hev 
got no right ter detain Me! " 

"What for not? " demanded the sheriff sternly. 
"What d' ye call this fix'n'?" He opposed to 
Tubal Cain Sims's nose, with the trifling interven- 
ient space of an inch, his own pistol. 

"Shootin' -iron! " sputtered Tubal, squinting 
fearfully at it. 

"Worn in defiance o' the law and to the terror 
o' the people," said the sheriff frowningly. "I 
have got to be indicted myself or to arrest you on 
that charge. And I reckon you know you ain't 
got no right to carry concealed weepons." 

"Ain't got no right ter w'ar a shootin '-iron I " 
exclaimed Tubal Sims, his eyes starting out of his 
head. 

"Agin the law," said the deputy airily. 

"Agin the law!" echoed Tubal Sims, his back 
against the wall, and his eyes turning first to one, 
then to the other of his companions. "Lord! 
Lord ! I never knowed afore how fur the flat-woods 
war ahint the mountings! How air ye goin' ter 
pertec' yerself agin yer neighbor 'thout no shoot- 
in'-iron?" he asked cogently. 

"By the law," said both officers in vmison. 

"Thar ain't no law in the mountings, thank 
Gawd! " cried Tubal Sims, 

"There is law here," declared the sheriff, "and 
a plenty of it to go round." 



256 THE JUGGLER. 

"Thank Gawd! " echoed the pious deputy. 

"Come, old man! " said the sheriff. "Come in 
here an' set down, an' sorter straighten out, an' 
tell me what in hell ailed ye to come bangin' on 
the jail door with a weepon called a shootin'-iron 
till you git yourself arrested for crim'nal offense. 
Surely, surely, you have got some reason in you." 

He flung open a door close at hand, and Tubal 
Cain Sims, his knees trembling under him, so 
great was the nervous reaction in his metamor- 
phosis from the masterful accuser to the despairing 
accused, was ushered into a room which seemed to 
him dark despite the glare of sunlight that fell 
broadside half across the bare floor from two tall 
windows, — a gaunt and haggard apartment sug- 
gestive of the intention of the building of which it 
was a part. These windows were not grated, but 
the fleckings of moving clouds barred the sunlight 
on the floor, and the mutter of thunder came re- 
newed to the ear. The dust lay thick on the table 
in the centre of the room. A lounge covered with 
a startlingly gay quilt was in one corner, where 
Tubal Cain presumed the sheriff, in moments of 
fatigue which might be supposed to overpower 
even his stiff military figure in the deep midnight, 
slept with one eye open. A desk in the jamb by 
the fireplace held several bulky books, a large 
inkstand, a bag of fine-cut tobacco, a coarse glass 
tumbler which had nothing in it but a rank smell 
of a strong grade of corn whiskey, and a pipe half 
full of dead ashes, which the sheriff had hastily 



THE JUGGLER. 257 

laid aside when summoned to the scene of the hor- 
rors perpetrated by a forlorn human being in the 
desperation of the fear of still greater horrors to 
come. 

Tubal Cain Sims's mind, unaccustomed to mor- 
bid influences, could not detach itself from the 
idea. Despite his absorptions on his own account, 
he followed as an independent train of thought 
futile speculations as to where in the building this 
man might be, — close at hand, and he felt a ner- 
vous thrill at the possible propinquity, or in some 
remote cell and out of hearing; what had he guilt- 
ily done, or was he falsely accused ; had he been 
really resuscitated, or had the potentialities of life 
merely flickered up like the spurious quickening 
of a failing candle before the moment of extinc- 
tion, and was he even now, while the officers lin- 
gered here, dead again, and this time beyond 
recall; or would he not, left to his own devices, 
once more attempt his life ? The old mountaineer 
could not forbear. He turned to the sheriff with 
an excited eye. 

"Ain't ye 'feard he '11 hang hisself again? " he 
said huskily. 

The officer stared. "Who? " he inquired, with 
knitted brow, as if he had forgotten the occurrence 
absolutely; then with renewing recollection, "You 
can bet your life he won't." 

"Why not?" asked Sims, the clatter of his 
boots on the bare floor silent as he stopped short. 

The deputy gave a fleering laugh, ending in a 



258 THE JUGGLER. 

"ki-yi" of the extremity of derision. He had 
flung himself into a chair, and, with his elbows on 
the table, looked up with a scornful grin at Tubal 
Cain Sims, who seemed to entertain solicitude as 
to the capacities for management and discipline of 
Enott Blake, famous as the veriest martinet of a 
drill-sergeant years before he ever saw the inside 
of Kildeer County jail. 

This absurd officiousness, however, met with 
more leniency from the sheriff. Whether it was 
that, from his steady diet of commendation, his 
vanity could afford to dispense with such poor 
crumbs as Tubal Cain Sims might have it in his 
power to offer, or whether he was desirous of the 
emollient effects of indulgence to loosen his visi- 
tor's tongue, he apparently took no heed of this 
breach of the proprieties. 

"He's all right now. You needn't have no 
anxiety 'bout him," he said, as if it were a matter 
of course to be brought to book in this way. 

"He can't hurt himself nor any one else now," 
echoed the deputy, taking his cue. 

Sims turned from one to the other inquiringly. 

"Got him in a cage," said the sheriff grimly. 

For one moment Tubal Cain Sims silently 
cursed his curiosity that had elicited this fact for 
his knowledge and provision for future nightmares. 
It was of the order of things that sets the natural 
impulses of humanity and sympathy adverse to all 
the necessities of law and justice. He stared at 
the two officers, as if they were monsters. Per- 



THE JUGGLER. 259 

haps only his weapon, empty in the deputy's pistol- 
pocket, persuaded his apparent acquiescence. 

"Good Lord!" he gasped, "that's powerful 
tur'ble, — powerful tur'ble! " 

The sheriff was no mind-reader. He deemed 
that the allusion applied to the unjudicial hanging, 

"Not so very," he said, seating himself in a 
splint-bottomed chair, and elevating his boots to 
the topmost bar of the rusty, fireless grate. 
"'T ain't nigh so bad as havin' 'em fire the jail," 
he added gloomily. "They have played that joke 
on me five times. All this part o' the buildin' is 
new. Burnt spang down the last time we had a 
fire." 

"Take a chair, sir, take a chair," said the con- 
formable deputy, perceiving that politeness had 
come to be the order of the day. 

Tubal Sims, almost paralyzed by the number 
and character of the new impressions crowded 
upon his unaccustomed old brain, still stood star- 
ing from one to the other, his sunburned, grooved, 
lank-jawed face showing a sharp contrast with his 
shock of tow hair, which, having been yellow and 
growing partially gray, seemed to have reverted to 
the lighter tint that it had affected when he came 
into the world. His hat was perched on the back 
of his head, and now and then he reached up to 
readjust it there; some subtle connection surely 
exists between the hat of a man and his brain, 
some obscure ganglion, for never does embarrass- 
ment beset his intellect but the solicitous hand 



260 THE JUGGLER. 

travels straight to the outer integument. His 
creased boots moved slowly forward with the jeans- 
clothed continuations above them. He doubtfully 
seized on the back of a chair, and, still gazing 
from one to the other of his companions, deposited 
himself with exaggerated caution on the stanch 
wooden seat as if he half expected it to collapse 
beneath him. 

"Now," said the sheriff smoothly, "you are a 
sensible man, I know, an' I wish you well." 

"How 'bout that thar pistol?" said Tubal Cain 
Sims, instantly presuming upon this expression of 
amity. 

"I didn't make that law," said Enott Blake 
testily. "But I 'm here to enforce it, and you '11 
find that I know my duty an' will do it." 

Tubal Sims relapsed into his friendless despair. 
And once more the deputy essayed a new device. 

He turned his round, red, freckled, good-natured 
face full upon the visitor across the table, and, 
pushing back his black hat from the blond tendrils 
that overhung his forehead like an overgrown in- 
fant's, he said, fixing a grave blue eye uj)on Tubal 
Sims, "You came here to tell us about some crime 
you 've s'picioned." 

The sheriff plucked up his faculties as if an 
inspiration had smitten him. "You were going 
to give us the names an' fac's as far as you knew 
or they had developed," he followed hard on the 
heels of the j)ioneering deputy. 

"You caved after you got here, 'cause you 



THE JUGGLER. 261 

wished the man no harm, and the sight o' the jail 
sorter staggered you," pursued the subordinate. 

"But you had some personal motive," inter- 
jected the sheriff, suddenly solicitous for the veri- 
similitude of the sketch of the interior workings of 
Tubal Cain's astounded intellect. "It has to be 
a mighty plain, open case, with no s'picion 'bout 
it, when information ain't got some personal mo- 
tive, — justifiable, maybe, and without direct mal- 
ice, but personal motive." 

Tubal Cain Sims's head turned from one to the 
other with a pivotal action which was less sugges- 
tive of muscles than of machinery. His eyes were 
starting from beneath his shaggy, overhanging 
eyebrows. His lower jaw had dropped. Thus 
dangled before him, his own identity was as recog- 
nizable to him as to their divination. If he had 
had time to think, there might have seemed some- 
thing uncanny in this facile meddling with the 
secrets of his inner consciousness, hardly so plain 
to his own prognosis as in their exposition, but 
moment by moment he was hurried on. 

"Your personal motive in giving this informa- 
tion," continued the deputy, "is because you are 
afraid of the man." 

"Not for myse'f," blurted out Tubal Sims. 
"Before Gawd, I'll swear, not for myse'f." He 
was all unaware of an impending disclosure of the 
facts that he had resolved to hide, since the hor- 
rors of the jail, the true, visible presentment of 
the abstract idea of imprisonment, had burst upon 



262 THE JUGGLER. 

his shuddering realization. lie had forgotten his 
caution. His obstinate reticence relaxed. All the 
manhood within him roused to the alarm of the 
possibility that these officers should impute to him 
fear of any man for his own sake. He lifted a 
trembling, stiffened old hand with a deprecatory 
gesture. "Jes' one — jes' one darter! " He low- 
ered his voice in expostulation. 

"One daughter! " echoed the sheriff in surprise. 

"Gittin' interestin'," murmured the flippant 
deputy. 

"An' this hyar man wants ter marry her, an' 
she is willin' ter marry him, an' — an' he spoke 
of runnin' away." Tubal Cain Sims brought this 
enormity out with a sudden dilation of the eyes 
irresistible to the impudent deputy. 

"Powerful painful to the survivors ! " he snorted 
in a choking chuckle, "but not even a misde- 
meanor agin the law o' the land." 

The sheriff's countenance changed. Not that 
he apprehended any cause for mirth, for it might 
be safely said that he had not laughed at a joke 
for the past six years, and it would have been a 
matter of some interest to know how he appraised 
the cachinnation habitually going on all arpund 
about him, and which he was temperamentally 
debarred from sharing. His face merely took on 
a perjDlexed and keenly inquisitive expression as 
he bent his brow as to a worthy mystery. 

"You know a man can't be arrested for runnin' 
away with a young woman an' marry in' her," he 



THE JUGGLER. 263 

expostulated. "You aiu't such a fool as to think 
you can take the law to him to prevent that." 

There are few people in this world who do not 
arrogate to themselves special mental supremacy. 
Folly is like unto the jewel in the forehead of the 
toad in that the creature thus endowed is unaware 
of its possession. Tubal Cain Sims had perceived 
subacutely the acumen of both the officers, and 
was emulous of demonstrating his own intellectual 
gifts. The word "fool" is a lash that stings, and, 
smarting, he protested : — 

"The law would purvent it mighty quick by not 
waitin' fur him, ef he hed commit crimes." 

"What 'd he ever do?" demanded the sherifP 
incredulously. And the deputy sat very still and 
silent. 

Now, the peculiarity of being literal-minded has 
special reference to exoteric phenomena introduced 
for mental contemplation, but is easily coexistent 
with the evolution of an esoteric train of ideas, 
the complication of which is nullified by familiarity 
incident to their production. The sheriff was a 
plain man, a serious-minded man, who could not 
see a joke when it was before his nose; so literal- 
minded a man that because he never perceived the 
latent scheme of another, he himself was never 
suspected of scheming. 

"What 'd he ever do? " he repeated, and it did 
not occur to Tubal Cain Sims that he had not yet 
mentioned the juggler's name, nor so much as 
suggested his own or the locality whence he came. 



264 THE JUGGLER. 

"I ain't keerin' ter know ivhut lie done!" he 
asseverated, led on by the non-compliant look of 
the other. "I know he done somewhut ; an' 
Phemie ain't goin' ter be 'lowed ter marry no evil- 
doer an' crim'nal agin the law." 

The pause that ensued was unbroken, while the 
thunder rolled anew, and the dashing of the water 
of the surly black creek at the foot of the hill 
came to their ears. The sunshine on the floor 
faded out suddenly and all at once, and the murky 
gray light was devoid of any lingering shimmer. 
If the deputy breathed, he did not hear the heav- 
ing of his own chest, so still he was. 

The sheriff, having allowed in vain a goodly 
margin for continuance, went on abruptly : " That 's 
the way you fellows, with no sense of the obliga- 
tions of the law, carry on. You have got no in- 
formation to give. You have got some personal 
motive, an' that 's the way to get an officer into 
trouble, — false arrests an' charges of stirrin' up 
of strife an' such like, — an' it's personal motive 
always. I '11 bet this man o' yourn ain't com- 
mitted no crime," and he turned his calm gray 
eyes on Tubal Cain Sims, seated in the midst of 
his consciousness of a fool errand to the great 
county town. Mortified pride surged to his face 
in a scarlet flood, and vehement argument rose to 
his lips. 

"Why can't he sleep quiet nights in his bed, 
then?" he retorted. "Why do he holler out so 
pitiful, fit ter split yer heart, in his sleep. ' What 



THE JUGGLER. 265 

can I do ? For his life ! — his life ! — his life ! 
Oh, what can I do — for his life ! — his life ! — his 
life ' ? " 

The wind carae surging against the windows 
with a sudden burst of fury, and the sashes rattled. 
xis the gust passed to the different angles of the 
house, the sound of other shaking casements came 
from the rooms above and across the hall, dulled 
with the distance, till a single remote vibration of 
glass and wood told that even in the furthest cells 
the inmates of this drear place might share the 
gloomy influences of the storm, though fair wea- 
ther meant little to them, and naught the sweet o' 
the year. A yellow flash, swift and sinister, illu- 
mined the dull, gray room, that reverted instantly 
into gloom, and, as if the lightning were resolved 
into rain, the windows received a fusillade of hur- 
tling drops, and then their dusty, cobwebbed panes 
were streaked with coursing rivulets mingling to- 
gether here and there as they ran. 

The sheriff sat silently awaiting further disclo- 
sures, his eyes on the window, his guarded thoughts 
elsewhere. "The same words every night?" he 
asked at last. 

"The same words every night," repeated Tubal 
Cain reluctantly, as if making an admission. 

"Oh, you can't arrest a man for talking in his 
sleep," put in the deputy, with the air of flouting 
the whole revelation as a triviality ; and he yawned 
with much verisimilitude, showing a very red 
mouth inside and two rows of stanch white teeth. 



266 THE JUGGLER. 

"I ain't sech a fool ez that, Mr. Dep'ty," 
snarled Tubal Sims raucously; "but puttin' sech 
ez that terg ether with a pale face an' blue circles 
round the eyes, in the mornin', o' the stronges', 
finest-built, heartiest young rooster I ever seen in 
my life, — he could fling you or the slier 'ff from 
hyar clean acrost that creek, — an' layin' on the 
ruver-bank day arter day fishin' with no bait on 
his hook " — 

"What'd he catch?" queried the deputy, af- 
fecting anxious eagerness. 

"All he expected, I reckon," retorted Sims. 
"A-layin' thar, with his hat over his eyes, day 
arter day; an' his eyes looked ez tormented ez — 
ez a deer I shot wunst ez couldn't git up ter run 
an' couldn't hurry up an' die in time, an' jes' laid 
thar an' watched me an' the dogs come up. An' 
this man's eyes looked jes' like that deer's, — an' 
I never let the dogs worry him, but jes' whipped 
out my knife an' cut his throat." 

The deputy's eyes widened with pretended hor- 
ror. He snatched a pair of handcuffs from the 
drawer at the side of the table, and, rising, ex- 
claimed dramatically, "You say, in cold blood, you 
whipped out your knife and cut the man's throat! " 

"Ye think ye air powerful smart, Mr. Dep'ty," 
sneered Sims, out of countenance, nevertheless. 
"But thar ain't much credit in baitin' an' tor- 
mentin' a man old enough ter be yer father," 
remembering the sheriff's rebuke on this score, 
and imputing to him a veneration for the aged. 



THE JUGGLER. 26? 

"Yes, stop that monkeyin', Jeemes," Blake sol- 
emnly admonished his junior. Then, after silently 
eying' the rain still turbvilently dashing against the 
windows, he said reflectively, "Don't ye think, 
Mr. — Mr. — I disremember your name ? " 

"Sims, — Tubal Cain Sims," replied the owner 
of that appellation. 

"Oh yes; Mr. Sims. Don't you think the fel- 
ler's jest a leetle lazy? There's no law against 
laziness, though it needs legislation, being a deal 
more like the tap-root of evil than what money is, 
— though I don't set up my views against the 
Good Book." 

" 'Pears like 't warn't laziness, which may be a 
sin, but makes men fat, an' ez long ez the pot 
holds out ter bile, happy. This man warn't 
happy nor fat, an' he looked like the devils hed 
thar home with him." 

"Where did he come from, and what's his 
name? " 

"He 'lowed, one day, from Happy Valley, but 
he did n't know whar Happy Valley war. An' he 
talks like a town man, an' reads a power, an' tells 
tales ez Phemie say air out o' books; an' he gin 
a show " — 

"A show? " the sheriff interrupted. 

"A juggling show," pursued Tubal Sims, in 
higher feather since they no longer dissimulated 
their absorption in these details. "He calls his- 
se'f a juggler, though his name is John Leonard." 

"What 's he live on?" demanded the sheriff. 



268 THE JUGGLER. 

"The money he made at his show. He 'lowed 
ter gin moi-e shows, but the church folks gin it out 
ez he war in league with Satan, an' threatened ter 
dump him in the ruver, so he quit jugglin'." 

The deputy with difficulty repressed a guffaw, 
but asked, with a keen curiosity, "Was it a pretty 
good show?" 

"Ye never seen nuthin' like it in yer life. He 
jes'"- 

"What sort of lookin' man is he?" interrupted 
the sheriff. He cast a glance at the deputy, who 
unobtrusively began to busy himself with pen, ink, 
and paper, and was presently scribbling briskly as 
Tubal Cain Sims sought to describe the stranger. 

"He looks some like a mountain feller now," he 
said. "He paid my wife ter make him some 
clothes; but shucks!" his eye kindling with the 
glow of discursive reminiscence, "the clothes he 
kem thar in war a sight fur the jay-birds, — leetle 
pants ez kem down no furder 'n that, an' long 
stockin's like a gal's, an' no mo' 'shamed of 'em 'n 
I am o' my coat-collar; a striped black-an'-red 
coat he hed on, an' long, p'inted reddish shoes." 
He paused to laugh, while a glance of fiery excite- 
ment and significance shot from the eyes of one 
officer into those of the other. 

Far better than Tubal Sims they knew how to 
place the wearer of this sophisticated costume. 
For although their bailiwick was the comjjass of 
the county, their official duties carried them occa- 
sionally to neighboring cities and their suburbs; 



THE JUGGLER. 269 

and while rolling so rapidly was not conducive to 
gathering- moss for personal embellishment, it af- 
forded opportunity for observation not altogether 
thrown away. This man was out of place, — a 
wanderer, evidently ; but whether a fugitive from 
justice remained to be proved. 

And while Tubal Cain Sims talked convulsively 
on, hardly realizing whither his reminiscences led, 
the expert penman was quietly noting down all the 
personal traits of poor Lucien Royce, — his height, 
his weight, his size, the color of his hair and eyes, 
the quality of his complexion, the method of his 
enunciation, and the polish of his manner, — all in 
the due and accepted form of advertisement for 
criminals, minus the alluring sum offered for their 
apprehension by the governor of the State. 

Tubal Cain Sims did not note the cessation of 
the scraping of the pen, but the sheriff did, and 
it was within a few moments that he said, "Well, 
Mr. Sims, this offers no ground for arrestin' the 
man. But I '11 give you a piece of advice, — don't 
let him know of your errand here, or he '11 take 
French leave of you and take the girl with him. 
I can't arrest him for you " — 

"Courtin' 's the inalienable right of man, and, 
in leaj) year, of woman too," sputtered the deputy, 
with his pen in his mouth and his laugh crowding 
it. 

"But," continued the sheriff, "as I have some 
business up that way, I may come over soon an' 
look after him, myself. Say nothin', though, 



270 THE JUGGLER. 

about that, or you'll lose your daughter, — just 
one daughter." 

"One darter," echoed Tubal Sims, his eyes ab- 
sorbed and docile as he followed the crafty officer's 
speech. 

"Say nothin' to nobody, and I '11 see you before 
long." Then suddenly leaving the subject, with 
a briskening style he turned to the deputy. 
" Jeenies, take Mr. Sims before a magistrate, — 
Squair Purdy, I 'd recommend, — on a charge of 
carrying weepons with the intent o' goin' armed. 
Let him know, though, Mr. Sims, 'twas in igno- 
rance of the law, and a-travelin'. Remind him 
that the code says the statute is to be liberally 
construed. And remember that Jeemes can't 
swear that old army pistol was concealed on no 
account. I don't b'lieve Jeemes kin make out a 
case agin ye. Squair Purdy is mighty lenient." 

"Ain't you-uns goin'?" quavered Mr. Sims, 
distrusting the tender mercies of the facetious 
James. 

"No, sir," replied the sheriff, now far away in 
the contemplation of other matters. "Jeemes, go 
to the telephone and ring up the cap'n in Knox- 
ville. I want to speak to him." 

It only seemed a great babbling of a little bell 
in the grim twilight of the hall of the jail as the 
deputy piloted Tubal Cain Sims out of the door 
which had so obdurately closed on him. And how 
should his ignorance conceive that within three 
minutes the chief of police in Knoxville was listen- 



THE JUGGLER. 271 

ing to the description of poor Lucien Royce, given 
by tlie sheriff of Kikleer County, and trying for 
his life to reconcile its dissimilarities with the phy- 
sical traits of various missing malefactors sadly 
wanted by the police in divers localities? 



X. 

It was with a mild countenance and a cliastened 
heart that Tubal Sims rode up to his own door the 
next evening, and slowly dismounted, his old 
brains, stiff with the limited uses of a narrow rou- 
tine, dazed and racked by the brisk pace which 
they had been fain to conserve in the wide circuits 
which they had traveled in his absence. Never 
had the cabin on the river -bank looked so like 
home; never had home seemed so like heaven. 
For Tubal Cain Sims, in his secret soul, cared 
little for the bedizenments of crowns, and the 
superfluities of harps, and the extravagance of 
streets paved with gold, and the like celestial scen- 
ery of his primitive hymnology. The sight of 
Jane Ann Sims on the porch, her bulky arms 
akimbo, the flvitter of Euphemia's pink dress with 
the dark red roses from the slope of the dell where 
the spring lurked, could have been no dearer to 
him if they had had wings, — which appurtenance, 
however, in his lack of spiritual imagination, 
would have reduced them to a turkey -like stand- 
point or other gallinaceous level. He hardly re- 
membered to dread Jane Ann's questionings; and 
perhaps because of this beatific ease of mind, the 
humble works of fiction, which the puritanical 



THE JUGGLER. 273 

might denominate lies, that had occupied his facul- 
ties during his return journey, were exploited with 
a verisimilitude which received the meed of credu- 
lity. He stated that the thought of Jerry Gryce, 
his brother-in-law, and a paralytic, dwelling in 
Piomingo Cove, had weighed so on his mind, in 
wakeful hours of the night, that he had felt obliged 
to rise betimes and journey thither to see that all 
was well with him. And a cheerful report he was 
able to give of that invalid, — for indeed he had 
stopped in Piomingo Cove on the way back, — 
who had charged him with some asperity, however, 
being a superstitious man, to have a care how he 
took the liberty of dreaming about him, or nour- 
ishing presentiments in which he was concerned, or 
viewing visions. "I kin do all my own dreamin' 
an' ghost-seein' too, thanky kindly," he had said 
satirically. 

Jane Ann Sims was the less penetrating as she 
herself had developments of interest to detail. In 
a wheezy, husky whisper that had less the elements 
of confidential relation than a shriek might have 
compassed, she made plain the altered state of 
Euphemia's affections and the understanding which 
she and the juggler had reached. 

It is wonderful how little mental capital a man 
need possess to deceive the cleverest wife. Tubal 
Cain Sims, seated in the open passage, tilted far 
back against the wall in his chair, his saddle on 
the floor beneath his dangling feet and his mare 
cropping the grass beside the step, sustained every 



274 THE JUGGLER. 

appropriate pose of surprised interest as success- 
fully as if Mrs. Sims's story were new to his 
ears. How could she, even if infinitely more 
astute, have dreamed that it was the recital of 
these same facts which he had overheard that had 
sent him straight to Colbury with the instant de- 
termination to have his would-be son-in-law incar- 
cerated on a criminal charge, before more romance 
could come of the juggler's stay in Etowah Cove? 
She had expected oj^position, having divined Tubal 
Sims's disapproval of his guest from his jjerturbed 
and unwontedly crusty manner, and was scarcely 
prepared for the mildly temporizing way in which 
he received the disclosure. 

" Humph — a — waal, we-uns will hev ter gin it 
cornsideration, Jane Ann, a power o' cornsidera- 
tion, an' " — he suddenly remembered his piety — 
"some pray'r. Watch an' pray, Jane Ann." 

"I'm ekal ter my prayin' 'thout yer exhort- 
in's," she retorted, with proper spirit. "An' ef 
ye don't wanter set Phemie agin ye, ye 'd better 
do yer own prayin' powerful private." She could 
not forbear this gibe, albeit at the idol of them 
both. It was in graver and agitated mood that 
she revealed how the idea of an elopement had 
seemed to appeal to the young man's mind, — so 
much, indeed, that she began to fear he would 
welcome any parental opposition which would 
make it practicable. And here she found Tubal 
Cain at one with her own thoughts, so a-quiver 
with her own fears that she felt all at once bolder, 



THE JUGGLER. 275 

as if by communicating them they had mysteriously 
exhaled. Not so Tubal Cain Sims. It is to be 
doubted whether in all his life he was ever so ear- 
nestly and markedly benign and courteous as when 
he again met the juggler. His whole manner was 
so charged with the sentiment of placation that 
the young man's quick discernment easily divined 
his state of mind and his covert terrors. It elimi- 
nated for the present any other course of action 
than drifting along the smooth tides of love's 
young dream, for no elopement was possible when 
there was naught from which to flee. 

What wonderful days they were, as the full, 
strong pulses of June began to beat with the fer- 
vors of July! The long, ripe hours from early 
dawn to the late-lingering twilight held all the 
choicest flavors of the year. Never was the sunset 
so gorgeously triumphal; never was the dawn so 
dank with dew, so fresh of scent, so winged with 
zephyrs. The wilderness rang to the song of the 
thrush and of the mocking-bird, not less vocal 
now than with the impulse of spring. The brim- 
ming river yet ran deep in its rocky channel, and 
the voice of the cascade below the mill in the full- 
leaved joyous woods could be heard for miles on a 
still night. And how still were these nights of 
silent splendor, with the stars so whitely a-glitter 
in the deep blue spaces above, and a romantic 
mystery on the mute purple mountains below, and 
the great bespangled gossamer Galaxy, as if veil- 
ing some sanctity of heaven, scintillating through 



276 THE JUGGLER. 

all the darkness ! Not till late — till so late that 
no one was awake to heed or behold — a yellow 
waning moon with a weird glamour would glide 
over the eastern summits, and in its precarious 
hour before the flush of early dawn illumine the 
world with some sad forecast, with slow troublous 
augury of change and decline and darkness. 

Flowers in myriads budded at night to blow in 
the morning. Everywhere the strong, rich, vigor- 
ous growths unfolded to the sun. The leaves 
were thick in the woods, the shadows were dark 
and cool, and rivulets glanced in the midst of them 
like live leaping crystal. Anywhere down deep 
ravines, did one look long enough, were to be seen 
all the creatures of woodland poesy, evoked from 
the glamours of the June, — hamadryads at their 
bosky ease, and oreads among the craggy misty 
heights, and naiads dabbling at the margin of shel- 
tered springs, and elves listening alert with pointed 
ears to the piping of the wind in the reeds. 

These June days seemed to Royce as if he held 
them in perpetuity, — as if there could be no 
change save for the slow enhancement of all the 
charms of nature, bespeaking further laerfections. 
The past was so bitter ; the present was so sweet ; 
and he thought no more of the future. He was 
content. He had developed a certain adaptability 
to the uncouth conditions of the simple life here, 
or love had limited his observation and had con- 
centrated it. All the artificialities of his wonted 
standards had fallen from him, and he was happy 



THE JUGGLER. 277 

in the simplest way. He wondered that he should 
ever have thought the girl beautiful and charming 
hitherto, so embellished was her loveliness now; 
as if she too shared the ineffable radiance and 
grace of the June, with the fair and faintly tinted 
roses known as "the maiden's-blush " that grew just 
outside the door. He had told her that they were 
like her, and when he learned the old-fashioned 
name he wore one always stuck in the clumsy, ill- 
worked buttonhole of his blue-checked cotton shirt. 
So pervasive was the sentiment of happiness in 
the house that it sviffused even the consciousness 
of the two old people ; Jane Ann accepting it will- 
ingly and with vicariovis joy, and Tubal Cain 
yielding after many a qualm of doubt and tremor 
of fear, and still experiencing strong twinges of 
remorse. He had been led to believe, by the 
crafty sheriff's show of indifference to his disclo- 
sure, and repeated rejection as naught the signifi- 
cant points of the suspicion he had entertained, 
that he had been wrong from the first in his con- 
clusion. He had begun to argue from the officer's 
standpoint, and he was amazed and somewhat dis- 
mayed to perceive how slight were the grounds on 
which any reasonable charge could be based. As 
this conviction grew more decided, he anticipated, 
with an ever increasing terror, the possible visit of 
which the sheriff had casually spoken. Although 
he was sure now that, officially considered, it could 
but be a flash in the pan, still it would reveal to 
the juggler his host's hideous suspicions and fla- 



^78 THE JUGGLER. 

grant breach of hospitality, and from this Tubal 
Sims winced as from corporeal pain. He thought 
that the sheriff already considered him a preposter- 
ous fool; and albeit that judgment from so great a 
man — for Tubal Cain Sims' s self-conceit had been 
much abated by his trip to Colbury — was humili- 
ating to his pride, it would be far more poignant, 
multiplied by the number of inhabitants in the 
Cove, when published abroad and entertained by 
every man who dwelt in its vicinity. Moreover, 
the disclosure of his mission to Colbury would 
deliver the graceless informer, bound hand and 
foot as it were, into the power of Jane Ann Sims, 
and it might well alienate the juggler from them 
all and thus wreck Euphemia's haj)piness and pro- 
spects in life; and he had begun of late to value 
these. Whenever he was not mulishly resistant, 
he fell much under the influence of Jane Ann Sims, 
and her views of the preeminent qualities of the 
juggler's mind and manners and morals affected 
his estimate. She laid great stress on the fact of 
the young man's elaborate education, and was wont 
to toss her large head with a vertigo -provoking 
lightness as she averred, "Phemie warn't a-spell- 
in' year in an' year out ter marry one o' these hyar 
Cove boys ez dunno B from bull-foot! " And Tu- 
bal Cain would sneer in symj)athetic scorn, as if 
both he and his wife were not in precisely that 
sublime state of ignorance themselves. He shared 
her pride in a plan which the juggler had evolved 
to open a school in the little "church-house " when 



THE JUGGLER. 279 

the crops should be laid by, and in the fact that 
this suggestion had met with the readiest accept- 
ance for miles around, despite the prejudice touch- 
ing his feats of magic. 

One night, Jane Ann Sims, with the dish-cloth 
in her hand, was alternately wiping the supper 
dishes in the shed-room and cheerfully wheezing 
breathless snatches of a most lugubrious hymn, 
while Royce and Euphemia sat on the steps of the 
passage, where the moon, now in her first quarter, 
drew outlines of the vines on the floor, — with 
here the similitude of a nest, whence now a wake- 
ful, watching head protruded, and now a lifted 
wing, and now a downy, ball-like bulk ; and here, 
with indistinct verges, ' a cluster of quivering trum- 
pet-flowers, all dusky and blurring, like the smudg- 
ing black-and-white study of some impressionist 
artist. Tubal Cain Sims, seeking company, was 
aware, as he entered his domicile, that he would 
find no welcome here, so he betook himself, with 
his pipe in hand, to the leisurely scene of his help- 
meet's labors. There triumph awaited him, for 
Jane Ann Sims left the table and the dishes to the 
tallow dip and the candle-flies, to sink down in a 
chair and detail the fact that while he was gone to 
the blacksmith's shop to get his team shod a won- 
derful event had happened. Parson Tynes had 
been here again! 

Tubal Cain Sims's lower jaw dropped. Parson 
Tynes figured in his mind only as the troublous 
advocate of a dead-and-gone love, and he thought 



280 THE JUGGLER. 

it a breach of the peace, in effect, to seek to dis- 
inter and resuscitate this ill-starred attachment. 
He growled adversely, but he did not reach the 
point of articulate remonstrance, for Jane Ann 
Sims majestically waved her limp dish-cloth at 
him as a signal to desist, and opened her mouth 
very wide to emit the cause of her prideful satis- 
faction in a loud and wheezy whisper, — which dis- 
creet demonstration came sibilantly to the ears of 
the young people outside, the only other human 
creatures within a mile, and occasioned them much 
unfilial merriment. 

Parson Tynes no longer dwelt on marrying and 
giving in marriage. Ambition had been his theme. 
It seemed that once, not long ago, being in Col- 
bury when a great revival — a union meeting of 
various denominations — was held, he had had the 
opportunity to preach there through some wild 
rumor of his celebrity as a mountain orator; and 
afterward a certain visiting elderly minister had 
taken him aside and urged him to study and to 
cultivate his gifts, and above all to acquire a de- 
livery. The visiting city minister, being a man 
who appreciated the Great Smoky Mountains as a 
large and impressive element of scenery, and hav- 
ing never seen them except gracing the horizon, did 
not realize that in all their commodiousness they 
had scant accommodations for learning. On his 
part, Tynes did not appreciate any especial supe- 
riority in the delivery of the men he had heard. 
His slow drawl and his mispronunciations were, 



THE JUGGLER. 281 

of course, unperceivecl by him, and, speaking from 
a worldly point of view, he was chiefly refreshed 
at the meeting by the consciousness that there 
were many more ideas in his sermon than in that 
of the visiting city minister. He wondered satiri- 
cally how the good man would have received the 
converse of this charge, had he dared to exhort 
him in turn to cultivate thought and acquire ideas. 
The meeting had done Tynes no good. It had 
only hurt his pride, and roused a certain animosity 
toward the larger world outside his life and the 
round of his work, and caused him to contemn as 
spurious the pretensions of the luckier clergy. He 
did not accord the advice he had received a single 
thought, so much more important it seemed to him 
what a preacher says than how he says it. But 
Jane Ann Sims had talked much and j)ridefully to 
her cronies in the Cove about the juggler's "read- 
in's," and their fame had reached the parson's 
ears. Shortly after, he chanced to encounter 
Royce at the mill, and for the first time was im- 
pressed by the charm of a cultured enunciation in 
a naturally beautiful voice. "I'd like powerful 
well ter speak like that, now," he said to himself, 
with a sudden discrimination of superiority. And 
this afternoon he had come to say that he had 
heard of the projected school, and that he would 
like to know whether the juggler had ever been 
taught elocution and was qualified to impart his 
knowledge. Royce had read for him, — or rather, 
had recited from memory, — and Tynes had been 



282 THE JUGGLER. 

surprised and delighted, and had averred that he 
read "better 'n all the men at the union meeting 
shook up in a bag together, the city minister at 
the bottom." 

"But ye would hev been s'prised, Tubal," said 
Mrs. Sims, her fat face clouding and her dimples 
turning to creases, "ter hev viewed the gamesome 
an' jokified way ez John Leonard conducted his- 
self ter the pa'son — plumb scandalous — made a 
puffeck laffin' -match o' the whole consarn; though 
arter a while the pa'son seemed some less serious, 
too. But he an' John Leonard air a-goin' ter 
meet every day, beginnin' day arter ter-morrer, in 
the schoolhouse, ter take lessons in readin'. An' 
the pa'son pays him fur it. Jes' think o' that! " 
Her hand with the limp dish-cloth in it extended 
itself impressively. "Teachin' the pa'son — the 
pa'son, mind ye — ter read! " 

Tubal Cain Sims sat electrified by the honor. 
Now and again his stiff old visage relaxed with a 
broad smile, but this some grave thought suddenly 
puckered up. In the midst of his satisfaction and 
his apjsropriation of the honor that had descended 
upon his house, ever and anon a secret thought of 
his earlier distrust of the juggler intruded with a 
vaguely haunting fear of the promised visit from 
the sheriff. This he had latterly put from him, 
for the long silence and the passage of time war- 
ranted him in the conclusion that it had been 
merely a device of the officer to satisfy a meddle- 
some old fool, and was from the beginning devoid 



THE JUGGLER. 283 

of intention. He hardly dared to wonder what 
Jane Ann Sims would have thought of his suspi- 
cion, as he remembered that from the moment of 
the juggler's entrance on that stormy evening she 
had rated the young guest as highly as now. But 
then, it had never been her chance to hear those 
strange, mysterious utterances from the turmoils 
of midnight dreams. 

"Jane Ann," Tubal Sims said, with quavering 
solemnity, "I know this hyar young man be pow- 
erful peart, an' thar 's nobody in the kentry ter 
ekal him, not even Pa' son Tynes; but what would 
you-uns think ef ye war ter hear him call out, like 
I hev done, in the night, — 'way late, 'bout the 
darkest hour, - — ' But the one who lives ! — fur 
whose life ! — his life ! — fur his life ! — what can I 
do ! — fur his life ! — his life ! — it must be ! — his 
life!'" 

As he mimicked the cabalistic phrases that had 
so strongly laid hold upon his imagination, the 
very inflections of the agonized voice were dupli- 
cated. The sentiment of mystery, of awe, with 
which the air was wont to vibrate was imparted 
anew. The despair, the remorse of the tones, sent 
a responsive thrill like a fang into the listener's 
heart. Jane Ann Sims, her face blank and white, 
sat staring dumbly as she hearkened. The leaves 
darkly rustled close to the window. Dim moon- 
light flecked the ground on the slope beyond with 
shadow and a dull suffusive sheen. The wind, 
rushing gustily past, bowed the flame of the gut- 



284 THE JUGGLER. 

tering tallow dip, feebly flaring, in the centre of 
the table. As she put out her hand mechanically 
to shield it from extinction, the motion and the 
trifling care seemed to restore her mental equi- 
librium. 

"That sounds powerful cur'ous, Tubal," she 
said gravely, and his heart sank in disappointment 
with the words and tone. He had expected Jane 
Ann Sims to flout the matter aside loftily, and 
indignantly decline to consider aught that might 
reflect on her much-admired guest. It was he 
himself who began to feel that it was of slight 
moment and hardly worth detailing; the sheriff 
had barely listened to it, without lifting an eye- 
lash of tired and drowsy eyes. He was sorry he 
had told Jane Ann. What a pother women are 
wont to stir up over a trifle ! 

"Why ain't you-uns never spoke of it afore?" 
she demanded. 

"Kase I 'lowed 't would set you-uns agin him," 
said the specious Tubal tentatively. 

Jane Ann sniffed contemptuously. " Waal, I 
ain't been 'quainted with no men so powerful puf- 
feck in all thar ways ez I kin be sot agin a young- 
ster, what eats a hearty supper, fur talkin' in his 
sleep. I 'd be a powerful admirer of the ' sterner 
sex,' ez Pa'son Greenought calls 'em, ef I knowed 
no wuss of 'em 'n that." 

"Wha — wha — what ye goin' ter do 'bout'n it, 
Jane Ann?" sputtered Tubal Cain, seeing her 
ponderously rising, determination on her strong 
features. 



THE JUGGLER. 285 

"I be goin' ter ax him what he means by it, 
that 's what," said Jane Ann. And before Tubal 
Cain could protest, she was leaning out of the 
window and wheezily calling to the young people 
slowly strolling along the slope before the door. 

"Kem in, chil'n. I want ter ax John Leonard 
a kestion." 

She met him at the entrance of the passage, the 
tallow dip in her hand, glowing with a divergent 
aureola of white rays against the dusky brown 
shadows and green leaves of the vines opposite. 
Pie paused, expectant, while Euphemia, in her 
green dress, stood on the sill amongst the swaying 
vines, hardly distinguishable from them save for 
her fair ethereal face, looking in as if from elf- 
land, so subtly sweet was its reminiscent expres- 
sion. But he was intent of attitude, with a ques- 
tion in his waiting eyes; not dallying mentally 
with the thoughts he had had in contemplation, 
but altogether receptive to a new theme. 

His face changed subtly as Jane Ann Sims, 
watching him narrowly, repeated the words of his 
somnolent speech. "What air ye talkin' 'bout, 
John Leonard, whenst ye say them words agin an' 
agin an' agin, night arter night?" she asked him 
inquisitively. 

He did not hesitate. Still, he had a strange 
look on his face, as if summoned many and many 
a mile thence. "I dream that I am dead, some- 
times, and others need me back again, and I can- 
not go. I can do nothing. I often dream that I 
am dead." 



286 THE JUGGLER. 

It SO fell out tlie next day that this seemed no 
dream. He was so surely dead that he walked 
the ways of this world an alien. He was not more 
of it than if the turf in the far cemetery, beside 
the marble that bore his name, grew green and 
lush with its first summer veritably above his 
breast. He had no premonition of the deteriora- 
tion of the spurious animation which had of late 
informed the days. The dawn came early, as was 
its wont in these slow diurnal measures of July, 
and cheer came with it. The explanation he had 
given of his strange words was more than satisfac- 
tory, and all about him was instinct with a sort 
of radiant pleasure in him which diffused its glow 
into his own heart. 

As he stood in the passage lighting his pipe, 
after breakfast, he noticed a salient change in the 
landscape. No smoke was rising from the high 
promontory where was situated the primitive kiln 
of the lime-burners. 

"Ye jes' fund that out?" said Tubal Cain, 
with a chuckle, as, tilted against the wall in his 
chair, he listlessly dangled his feet. "Thar ain't 
been no lime bu'nt thar fur six weeks." He 
chuckled anew, so cordially did he accept the sen- 
timental cause of the juggler's lapse of observa- 
tion. "I reckon that thar lime is made up inter 
morter an' air settin' up prideful ez plaister now, 
an' hev done furgot it ever war rock." 

The young man placidly endured the raillery; 
in fact he relished it, for it was proof how genuine 



THE JUGGLER. 287 

had been his absorption, and he was deprecatory 
of self-deception. That alert commercial interest 
never quite moribund prompted his next question. 

"I don't see that lime is used in the Cove," 
he said, reflecting on the stick-and-clay chimneys, 
and the clay daubing in the chinking between the 
logs of the walls of the houses. "What was the 
purpose of that extensive burning of lime, Mr. 
Sims?" 

"Ain't you-uns hearn?" demanded the host, 
with another cheerful grin expanding his corru- 
gated leathern - textured countenance. "Pete 
Knowles wovildn't tell a-fust; he got the job some- 
hows." 

"Afraid of underbidding." The juggler nodded 
comprehension of the motive. 

"So he bu'nt, an' bu'nt, an' bu'nt, an' the 
lime it piled up in heaps in that thar dry rock- 
house what 'minds me powerful o' the sepulturs 
o' the Bible. But it air six weeks sence they 
bar 'led it up an' wagoned it off 'bout ten mile 
or mo'." 

"What did they want it for, and who are 
' they '? " inquired Royce, still interested. 

" ' They ' is them hotel men over yander at New 
Helveshy Springs, an' they wanted the lime ter 
plaister the old hotel what hev hed ter be repaired 
an' nigh made over. They 'lowed 't war cheaper 
ter git the lime bu'nt at the nearest limestun rocks 
'n ter buy it bar 'led an' haul it fifty mile from a 
railroad." 



288 THE JUGGLER. 

This was a proposition of a kind that might well 
secure the juggler's business-like consideration. 
But his eyes were fixed with a sudden untrans- 
lated thought. His pipe had turned unheeded in 
his hand, fire, tobacco, and ashes falling from it 
into the dewy weeds below the step, as he stood on 
the verge of the passage. His expressive face 
had altered. It was smitten with some prophetic 
thought, and had grown set and rigid. 

"New Helvetia Springs! Summer resort, of 
course. I didn't know there was anything of the 
sort in the vicinity," he said at last. "What kind 
of place is it?" 

"I dunno!" exclaimed Sims, dangling his feet 
briskly back and forth in an accession of contempt. 
"/ never tuk the trouble ter ride over thar in my 
life, though I hev knowed the hotel ter be a-run- 
nin', ez they call it, fur forty year an' more." 

Royce stood in silence for a time, moodily lean- 
ing his shoulder against the wall of the house, one 
hand thrust in his leather belt, the other holding 
the pipe at an angle and a poise which would seem 
to precede an immediate return of the stem to his 
mouth. But he did not smoke. Presently he put 
the pipe into his pocket, drew his hat over his 
eyes, and wandered down the road; then climbing 
a fence or two, he was off in the woods, as safe 
from interruption as if in the midst of a trackless 
ocean. He walked far and fast with the constraint 
of nervous energy, but hardly realizing the instinct 
of flight which informed his muscles. When at 



THE JUGGLER. 289 

last lie .flung himself down at the foot of great 
rocks that stood high above a shelving slope in 
woods so dense that he conld not see farther than 
a yard or two in any direction, for the flutter of 
the multitudinous leaves and the shimmer of the 
interfulgent sunshine, he was saying to himself 
that he was well quit of all the associations of his 
old world ; that he had found safety here, a mea- 
sure of content, a means of livelihood, and the 
prospect of a certain degree of simple happiness 
when he should be married to a girl whom he had 
learned to love and who loved him, — a beautiful 
girl of innate refinement, who had mind enough to 
understand him and to acquire an education. He 
would do well to still resolutely that sudden plun- 
ging of the heart which had beset him upon the 
knowledge that his old woi'ld was so near at hand, 
with all those endearing glamours as for the thing 
that is native. What avail for him to hover 
around them, to court the fate of the moth? He 
remembered with a soi-t of terror the pangs of 
nostalgia which at first had so preyed upon him, 
and should he deliberately risk the renewal of 
these poignant throes, now possibly spent forever? 
Regret, danger, despair, lay in the way thither; 
why should he long to look in upon scenes that 
were now as reminiscences, so well could he pre- 
dicate them on experiences elsewhere? He won- 
dered, fretfully, however, and with a rising doubt 
of himself, that when he and Euphemia had 
climbed the mountain and looked down at the 



290 THE JUGGLER. 

shimmer of the small towns in the furthest valley, 
and he had felt no stir of wistfulness, he should 
have interpreted his tranquillity as a willing re- 
nunciation of the life he had left, — as if the 
treadmill limitations and deprivations and mental 
stagnation of a village were the life he had left. 
And suddenly - — although he had chosen this spot 
because it shut him in, because naught could be 
seen to deflect his errant mind, in order that he 
might realize and earnestly grapple with this wild 
and troublous lure — the illusions of a sophistry 
glimmered even in these scant spaces. He was 
definitely reconciled, he told himself, to his de- 
stiny. It was only his imagination that vaguely 
yearned for the status he had left. With a touch 
of reality the prismatic charms of this bubble of 
fancy would collapse, — or the glimpse of condi- 
tions native to him, the sound of familiar sj^eech 
as of his mother tongue, the sight of men and 
women as compatriots in this long exile as of a 
foreign land, would prove a refreshment, a tonic, 
an elixir, renewing his strength to endure. He 
was a coward to deprive himself — for fear of dis- 
content — of something to enjoy in the present, to 
remember, and to look forward to, in recurrent 
years. 

He had not thought to notice the dwindling 
shadows that betokened noon and the waiting din- 
ner which Euphemia had made ready with many 
a remembrance of his preferences. The sun was 
westering apace when, as if impelled by a force 



THE JUGGLER. 291 

beyond his control, he found himself in the country 
road, forging ahead with that long swift stride, 
the envy of his comrades of the pedestrian club of 
his urban days. His heart seemed to divine the 
way, for he scarcely paused to debate which fork 
to pursue when the road diverged; he gave no 
heed to the laurel jungles on either hand, or, 
further on, to the shady vistas under the towering 
trees; he only perceived at last that the density 
of the woods had diminished. Soon peaked and 
turreted roofs appeared among the thinning boughs, 
and as he crossed an elaborately rustic foot-bridge, 
coquettishly picturesque, flung across a chasm 
where deep in the brown damp shadows a silver 
rill trickled, he recognized this as an outpost of 
artificiality. A burst of music from a band thrilled 
his unaccustomed ears ; a vast panorama of purple 
and azure mountains, a vermilion sun, a flaring 
amber sky, great looming gray crags, and the 
bronze-green sunlit woods beyond were asserted in 
an unfolding landscape; he heard the laughter 
cadenced to express the tempered mirth of polite 
society, and the stir of talk. The verandas of the 
two-storied hotel were full of well-dressed people. 
His swiftly glancing eye marked the dowagers; 
their very costumes were familiar, — black grena- 
dines or silks with a subdued inclination toward 
a touch of lavender decoration, and some expert 
softening of the ravages of time by the sparing 
use of white chiffon or lace, with always something 
choice in the selection of dainty shawls on the 



292 THE JUGGLER. 

back of a chair near at hand (how often had he 
resignedly borne such a wrap over his arm in the 
meek train of a pretty girl's chaperon!): he knew 
the type, — clever, discreet, discerning. On the 
lawn two games of tennis were in progress, the 
white of the flannel suits of the men enhanced in 
the sun against the green grass. Along the road 
beyond, two or three smart little carts were coming 
in with the jauntiest of maidens in daintily tinted 
summer attire and sailor hats. An equestrian 
couple — the young man of a splendid physique 
and elegantly mounted — went by him like a flash, 
as he stood, dazed and staring, by the rail of the 
bridge. He retained barely enough jsresence of 
mind to dodge aside out of the way, and he re- 
ceived a volley of sand, covering him from head to 
foot, from the heels of the horses as they disap- 
peared in the woods at the steady hand -gallop. 
On the crag at the verge of the bluff were groups 
of young people, strolling about or seated on the 
ledges of the cliff, the young men dangling their 
feet over the abysses beneath. Such being the ac- 
cepted fad; now and then, one not emerged from 
the hobbledehoy chrysalis would, by means of 
grotesque affectations of falling, elicit small com- 
plimentary shrieks, half terror, half mirth, from 
the extremely young ladies whom he favored with 
his improving society. At one side there was a 
meeting of fir boughs, a dank and cool dark vista, 
a great piling of fractured and splintered rocks, a 
sudden descent, and down this bosky way was so 



THE JUGGLER. 293 

constant a going- and coming that Lucien Royce 
divined that it led to the hidden spring. 

He stared at the scene through the tears in his 
eyes. To him who had never had a home it was 
home, who had never dreamed of heaven it was 
bliss. He would have given all he could imagine 
— but, poor fellow, he had naught to give ! — to 
be able to communicate in some mysterious way 
the knowledge of his quality to one of those high- 
nosed, keen-eyed elder women, of composed fea- 
tures and fine position and long social experience • 
and much discrimination in the world's ways, and 
to have her commend his course, and counsel 
prudence, and pity his plight. He looked at the 
elder men, whose type he also knew, — men of 
weight in the business world, lawyers, bankers, 
brokers, — and he thought what a boon might be 
even the slightest impersonal conversation with* 
one of his own sphei'e, his equal in breeding, in 
culture, in social standing. He was starved, — he 
had not realized it; he was dying of mental inani- 
tion ; he was starved. 

The next moment, two of the tennis-players, 
ending the diversions of the afternoon with a 
walk, approached the bridge : the man in his im- 
maculate white flannels, his racket carried over 
his shoulder; the girl in her picturesque tennis 
toggeiy. Royce, dusty, besprinkled with sand, 
conscious of his coarse ill-made jeans clothes and 
his great cowhide boots, colored to the roots of his 
hair as their eyes fell upon him. In adaptation to 



294 THE JUGGLER. 

the custom of the mountaineers, who never fail to 
speak to a stranger in passing, they both murmured 
a "Good-evening" as they went by. Royce, rous- 
ing with a galvanic start, lifted his hat, hardly 
realizing why they should glance at him in obvious 
surprise and with elevated eyebrows. For one 
moment he pondered fruitlessly on the significance 
of this trifling incident. The solution of the mys- 
tery came to him with a monition of added cau- 
tion. The social training of the mountaineer does 
not comprise the ceremony of lifting the hat in 
salutation. If he would sustain the rural character 
he must needs have heed, since so slight a deflec- 
tion was marked. He heard them laughing as they 
went, and he thought, with all the sensitiveness in- 
cident to a false position, that he was the cause of 
their mirth, the incongruity of this "million of 
* manners " with such a subject. With an aversion 
to a repetition of this scene he betook himself out 
of the way of further excursionists, noticing that 
several couples were slowly strolling in the direc- 
tion of the bridge. But as he moved forward 
from under the shadows of the fir and into the 
clear space of the lawn, he could scarcely sustain 
the observation which he felt leveled at him, Ar- 
gus-eyed, from the verandas, the lawn, the tennis- 
court, the crags. His pride was in arms against 
his humble plight. His face burned with shame 
for his coarse garments, the dust, the very clumsi- 
ness of his rough boots, the length of his over- 
grown silky red-brown hair, his great awkward 



THE JUGGLER. 295 

hat, the uncouth figure he cut in respectable so- 
ciety. But despite the flush on his cheek, and a 
thrill hot and tingling ever starting with each 
searing thought to his eyes, as if tears were to be 
shed but for the sheer shame of it, he laughed 
scornfully at his pride, and despised himself to be 
so poor, so forlorn, so outcast from his native 
world, yet so yearning for it. "What does it 
matter?" he said to himself . "They don't know 
me. Lucien Royce is dead, — dead forever." He 
walked on for a few minutes, the trained gait of 
an athlete, his graceful bearing, the individuality 
and distinction of his manner, all at their best, 
mechanically asserted as an unrealized protest in 
some sort that those lorgnettes on the verandas 
should not conceive too meanly of him. "I sup- 
pose I thought the ghost of a dude like Lucien 
Royce would be a mighty well-set-up affair, with 
a sort of spectral style about him and an unearthly 
chic. But what does it matter what they think 
of a nonentity of a stray mountaineer like this? 
Lucien Royce is dead, — dead forever ! " 

He had merely ventured to partially skirt the 
lawn, bending his steps toward the shelter of a 
small two-storied building at the nearest corner of 
it, and somewhat down the road. The lower por- 
tion of this structure, he perceived, was used as a 
store, containing a few dry goods, but dispensing 
chiefly needles and pins, especially hairpins, and 
such other commodities of toilet as the guests 
miffht have forgotten or exhausted or could be 



296 THE JUGGLER. 

induced to buy. He paused in the doorway : even 
the sight of the limited stock ranged decorously on 
the shelves, the orderly counters, the smooth coun- 
tenance of the salesman, seemed pleasing to him, 
as reminiscent of the privileges of civilization. 

"Can we do anything for you, sir?" asked the 
clerk suavely. 

Royce caught himself with a start. Then speak- 
ing with his teeth half closed to disguise his voice, 
and drawling like a mountaineer, he said, shaking 
his head, " Jes' viewin' the folks some." 

He had a sense that the imitation was ill done, 
and glanced furtively at the face of the man 
behind the counter. But the clerk was devoid 
of speculation save as this faculty might explore 
his customers' pockets. Eoyce noted, however, a 
second warning, and since the sun was down and 
the lawn now depopulated, save for here and there 
a hastening figure making for the deserted veran- 
das, he ventured out in his shabby gear upon the 
plank walk that stretched along the bluff where no 
crags intervened, but the descent was sheer to a 
green and woodsy slope below. The early tea was 
in progress ; the band that for some time had been 
heralding its service, playing within the quad- 
rangle, was silent now, and the shadows were 
abroad in the mountains ; mists were rising from 
dank ravines on the opposite range. A star was 
in the flushed sky. A whippoorwill's plaintive 
tones came once and again from the umbrageous 
tangles that overshadowed the spring. Yellow 



THE JUGGLER. 297 

lamps were flaring out into the purple dusk from 
the great looming unsubstantial building. He 
marked the springing into sudden brilliancy of a 
row of windows on the ground floor, that revealed 
a long, bare, empty apartment which he identified 
as the ballroom. There would be dancing later 
on. A cheerful clicking as of ivory against ivory 
caused him to pause abruptly and peer down the 
slope below, where a yellow radiance was aglow 
amongst the trees and precipitous descents. It 
came from the billiard-room in the pavilion, pic- 
turesquely poised here among the rocks and chasms, 
and looking out into a wild gorge that gave a 
twilight view of the darkening valley, and the 
purple glooms of the mountains towering along the 
horizon. It was the airiest type of structure. 
With only its peaked roof and its supporting tim- 
bers, the floor and the flights of steps, it seemed 
free to the breeze, so wide and long were the 
windows, all broadly open. Royce, looking down 
into its illuminated interior, glowing like a topaz 
in the midst of the dark foliage that pressed close 
about it, had a glimpse of the green cloth of the 
tables, the red and white balls, the dexterously 
poised cues, the alertly attitudinizing figures, — 
still loitering in white flannels, although the lights 
now agleam in bedroom windows told that all the 
world had begun to dress for the ball, — and heard 
the pleasant, mirthful voices. 

Why did he linger here, he asked himself, as 
he repressed the natural mundane interest which 



298 THE JUGGLER. 

almost spoke out his criticism as he watched the 
game with the eye of a connoisseur. This was not 
for him. He was not of this world. Pie had 
quitted it forever. And if he were mortified to 
fill a place in a sphere so infinitely removed from 
that to which he was born and entitled, would it 
better matters to emerge from his decent obscurity 
and his promised ojjportunities, his honest repute 
and his simple happiness, to the conspicuous posi- 
tion as the cynosure of all eyes in a criminal trial, 
and to the permanent seclusion of a felon's cell? 
For that was what he risked in these hankerings 
after the status and the sphere from which he was 
cast out forever. 

He was in the darkening road and plodding 
homeward before this admonition to his own rebel- 
lious heart was concluded, so did the terrors of that 
possible ignominious fate dominate his pride, and 
scorch his sensibility, and lay his honest self-re- 
spect in the dust. He was tired. The drops stood 
on his forehead and his stej) lagged. Thrice the 
distance in the time he had walked it would not 
have so reduced his strength as did the mental 
perturbation, the inward questionings, those tu- 
multuous plungings of his strong young heart. 
He was pale, and his face was lined and bore some 
vague impress of the nervous stress he had sus- 
tained, when at last he came up the steps of the 
open passage at Sims's house, and Jane Ann bent 
her anxious flabby countenance toward him. 

"Waal, before the Lawd! " she exclaimed, hold- 



THE JUGGLER. 299 

ing the tallow dip in her hand so as to throw its 
light full upon him, — and he divined that at fre- 
quent intervals in the last two hours she had 
emerged thus with the candle in her hand to listen 
for his step, — "hyar the chile be at last! Whar 
in the name o' sense hev ye been, John Leon- 
ard?" she demanded, as Phemie fluttered out, 
pale and wistful despite her embarrassed laughter 
at the folly of their fright, and old Tubal Cain 
followed stiffly, with sundry grooves of anxiety 
added to the normal corrugations of his face. 

"In the woods," replied the juggler; and then 
realizing that he spoke with a covert meaning, "I 
lost my way." 

He slept the sleep of exhaustion that night, and 
the next morning he rose refreshed in body, and 
with the resolutions of his sober reflections con- 
firmed. 

"I am not such a snob as to care for the mere 
finery of existence, the mere wealth and show and 
fashion," he argued within himself. "It 's partly 
the folly of my youth to care so much for those 
young fools over yonder, — so much like myself, 
or like what I used to be, — and dancing, and 
tennis, and wheeling, and flirting, and frivolity. 
A certain portion of these amenities has been the 
furniture of my life hitherto, and I am a trifle 
awkward at laying hold on it now without them. 
I love the evidences of good breeding, because I 
have been taught to respect them. I am preju- 
diced in favor of certain personal refinements, 



300 THE JUGGLER. 

because I was reared to think a breach of them as 
iniquitous as to crash all the ten commandments 
at one fell swoop. I revere culture and literary 
or scientific achievement, because I appreciate 
what they require in mental capacity, and I am 
educated to gavige in a degree the quality of their 
excellence. I should like to have some conversa- 
tion, occasionally, with people near my own calibre 
in social status and mind, and with similar motives 
and sentiments and way of looking at things. But 
I can live without a ballroom and a billiard-table, 
and, by the Lord, I '11 brace up like a man and do 
it contentedly." 

He went off cheerfully enough, after breakfast, 
to meet Tynes in the little schoolhouse. There 
he recited, in forgetfulness of his troubles, poems 
that he loved, and bits of ornate prose that he 
recalled, for he had a good memory ; and he deliv- 
ered sundry sound dicta touching the correct 
method of opening the mouth and of the pose of 
the body, and a dissertation on the physical struc- 
ture of the vocal organs, illustrated by diagrams 
which he drew on the fly-leaf of the reading -book, 
and which mightily astonished Absalom Tynes, 
who learned for the first time that such things be. 
The leaves of the low-swinging elms rustled at the 
windows; the breeze came in and stirred up the 
dust; the flying squirrel who nested in the king- 
post of the roof, and who had had an early view 
of the juggler upon his first appearance in this 
house, came down and sat upon a beam and with 



THE JUGGLER. 301 

intent eyes gazed at him. Tynes, in an unaccus- 
tomed station among the benches used by the con- 
gregation, watched and listened with unqualified 
commendation as Royce stood upon the platform 
and made the little house ring with his strong, 
melodious young voice. Abdicating the vantage- 
ground of spiritual jireeminence, Tynes subordi- 
nated his own views, and when he read in his turn 
sundry of the secular bits of verse embalmed in 
the Reader — he seemed to think there were no 
books in the world but school-books and the Bible 
— he accepted corrections with the mildest docil- 
ity, and preserved a slavish imitation of the spir- 
ited delivery of his preceptor. He rose into vig- 
orous rebellion, however, when, with many a 
"Pshaw!" Royce rejected the continued use of 
the elementary Reader for the vital defect of hav- 
ing nothing in it fit to read, and took up, as mat- 
ter worthy of elocutionary art, the Bible. Tynes, 
struck aghast by the change of delivery, the rever- 
ent, repressed, almost overawed tones, the deep, 
still gravity of the manner, listened for a time, 
then openly protested. 

"That ain't no way ter read the Bible," he 
stoutly averred. "Ye hev got ter thunder it at 
the sinner, an' rest yer v'ice on this word an' lay 
it down on that, an' lift it up " — 

"Ding-dong it, you mean," said the juggler, 
shifting quickly to his habitual tone. 

"The sinner ain't ter be kep' listenin' ter sech 
ez that. Jes' let yer v'ice beat agin his ear till he 



302 THE JUGGLER. 

can't keep the gospel out 'thoiit he be deef," Tynes 
contended. 

"Yes, and his senses accommodate themselves 
to the clamor, and his consciousness sways back 
and forth with the minister's voice, and he doesn't 
hear more than one half of what is said, because 
the fellow yells so loud that the sound drowns out 
the sense. But the congTegation looks pious, and 
folds its arms, and rocks itself back and forth with 
the rhythm of the sing-song, and the whole thing 
is just one see-saw. Do you believe that 's the 
way St. Paul preached on Mars' hill? " 

Tynes was suddenly bewildered. His manner 
assumed a sort of bridling offense ; it seemed some- 
what profane to speculate on the character of St. 
Paul's delivery. 

"Your way ain't the way the men read at the 
Colbury revival, ennyhow," he urged; for the union 
meeting, despite his wounded pride, had become 
a sort of standard. 

"I '11 bet my old hat there was n't anybody there 
who could come within a mile of my reading," 
glibly wagered the juggler, unabashed. 

Tynes reflected doubtfully a moment. "I dunno 
what's, the matter with it," he said. "It hurts 
me! I couldn't git my cornsent ter read that-a- 
way. It sounds like ye jes' been thar yestiddy, 
an' it all happened fraish, an' ye war tellin' 'bout 
it, an' ye hed n't got over the pain an' the grief of 
it yit — an' mebbe ye never would." 

In the pause that ensued the juggler trifled with 



THE JUGGLER. 303 

the pages, his eyes cast down, a smile of gratified 
vanity kirking in the kistrous pupils. 

"Well," Tynes said abruptly, "go on, John 
Leonard, go on." 

But as the reading proceeded, the face of the 
slight and pallid man sitting on the bench — now 
and again wincing palpably from the scenes seem- 
ingly enacted before him, from the old, old words 
all instinct with the present, from the terrible 
sense of the reality of those dread happenings of 
the last night in Gethsemane, and the denial of 
Peter, and the judgment-hall — all at once lighted 
up with a new and vivid gleam of animation. 
The chapter was at an end, the lingering musical 
cadences of the reverent voice were dying away, 
and as the reader lifted his head there were tears 
in his eyes, and the fisher of men had seen them. 

"Ye ain't so far from the kingdom, John Leon- 
ard," he said, in solemn triumph. 

The juggler recoiled in a sort of ashamed self- 
consciousness. "Don't deceive yourself ! " he ex- 
claimed. "It is only my literary sensibility. All 
the four Gospels — speaking profanely — are works 
of high artistic merit, and they can floor me when 
nothing else can." 

But the worldly ambition of Tynes had suddenly 
fled. He was baiting his hook and reeling out his 
line ; here was the prospect of a pi'ecious capture 
in the cause of religion. He might not learn to 
read the Bible in John Leonard's illusive and soul- 
compelling way, — and he hardly knew if he cared 



304 THE JUGGLER. 

to do this, so did it seem to penetrate into the 
very mystery of sacred things which had less poig- 
nancy under the veil of custom and indifference 
and a dull sense of distance in time and place, — 
but he would learn of him in secular things, he 
would remain by him, and now and again insidi- 
ously instill some sense of religious responsibility; 
and the soul of this sinner would indeed be a slip- 
pery fish if it could contrive to elude his vigilance 
at last. 

. He listened indulgently as the juggler declared 
he would have no more of the Reader, insisting 
that such literature would wreck his mind. But 
Tynes, for his own part, was not willing to trust 
himself to learn the arts of elocution from the 
sanctities of the Holy Book read with that imme- 
diate and vital certainty which tore so at his heart- 
strings. 

"I wonder," he said, his narrow, pallid face 
brightening with the inspiration, — "I wonder ef 
thar ain't some o' them books ye speak of over 
yander ter the sto' what that valley man keeps at 
New Helveshy Springs? They all bein' valley 
folks, mebbe he hev some valley books ter sell ter 
'em." 

"I have no doubt of it!" cried the juggler in 
delighted anticipation. He looked down for a 
moment, dubious of the wisdom of the course he 
had in contemplation, but with a quick joy beating 
at his heart. It was but natural, he argued within 
himself, recognizing the access of pleasure, that. 



THE JUGGLER. 305 

young and debarred as he was from the society of 
his equals, he should experience a satisfaction in 
these fleeting- glimpses of life as he had once known 
it, and in its attraction for him was no harbinger 
of regret and rue. Moreover, he judged that it 
would excite less attention for him to buy the book 
in person — he would make it appear that he was 
on an errand for some cottager of the summer 
sojourners — than if this ignorant parson should 
overhaul the literature of the Springs, with some 
wild tale of lessons from an elocutionary mountain- 
eer. As to danger, he would hold his tongue as 
far as he might, and he deemed that he looked the 
veriest mountain rustic in the garb he so despised. 
"Rather a jaunty rural rooster, perhaps," he said 
to himself, "but as rural as a cornfield.'' 



XI. 

ROYCE waited over one day after this agreement 
with Tynes, and marked with satisfaction how 
thoroughly his will was subject to his own control- 
He had seen New Helvetia once. There was nat- 
urally a certain mundane curiosity on his part to 
be satisfied. Doubtless, after another excursion 
or so thither, it would all pall upon him and he 
would be more content, since there was no dream 
of unattainable enchantments at hand upon which 
he dared not look. 

The place was singularly cheerful of aspect in 
its matutinal guise. The slanting morning sun- 
shine struck through the foliage of the great oaks 
and dense shrubs; but there was intervenient 
shadow here, too, dank, grateful to the senses, for 
the day already betokened the mounting mercury. 
Across the valley the amethystine mountains shim- 
mered through the heated air; ever and anon 
darkly purple simulacra of clouds went fleeing 
along their vast sunlit slopes beneath the dazzling 
white masses in the azure sky. In a ravine, a 
tiny space of blue-green tint amongst the strong 
full-fleshed dark verdure of the forests of July 
bespoke a cornfield, and through a field-glass 
might be descried the little log cabin with its deli- 



THE JUGGLER. 307 

cate tendril of smoke, the home of the mountaineer 
who tilled the soil. Of more distinct value in the 
landscape was the yellow of the harvested wheat- 
fields in the nearer reaches of the valley, where 
the bare spaces revealed the stage-road here and 
there as it climbed the summits of red clay hills. 

There was no sound of music on the air, the 
band being off duty for the nonce. Even that 
instrument of torture, the hotel piano, was silent. 
The wind played through the meshes of the de- 
serted tennis-nets, and no clamor of rolling balls 
thundered from the tenpin -alley, the low long roof 
of which glimmered in the sunshine, down among 
the laurel on the slope toward the gorge. The 
whole life of the place was focused upon the ve- 
randa. Royce's reminiscent eye, gazing upon it 
all as a fragment of the past as well as an evidence 
of the present, discerned that some crisis of mo- 
ment impended in the continual conjugation of the 
verb s^aimiser. The usual laborious idleness of 
fancy-work would hardly account for the una- 
nimity with which feminine heads were bent above 
needles and threads and various sheer fabrics, or 
for the interest with which the New Helvetia 
youths watched the proceedings and self -sufficiently 
jDroffered advice, despite the ebullitions of laughter, 
scornful and superior, with which their sage coun- 
sel was invariably received. There was now and 
again an exclamation of triumph as a pair of con- 
ventionalized wings were held aloft, completed, 
fashioned of gauze and wire and profusely span- 



308 . THE JUGGLER. 

gled with silver. He caught a sudden flash of 
tinsel, and noted the special demonstrations of 
congratulation and gTeat glee which ensued when 
one of the old ladies, fluttered with the anxiety of 
the inventor, successfully fitted a silver crown upon 
the golden locks of a poetic-faced young girl, 
a very Titania. The jocose hobbledehoy whom 
Royce had noted on the occasion of his previous 
excursion sat upon a step of the long flight leading 
from the veranda to the lawn, surrounded by half 
a dozen little maidens, and, armed with a needle 
and a long thread, affected to sew industriously, 
rewarded by their shrieking exclamations of de- 
light in his funniness every time he grotesquely 
drew out the needle with a great curve of his long 
arm, or facetiously but futilely undertook to bite 
the thread. 

With zealous gallantry sundry of the young men 
plied back and forth between the groups on the 
veranda to facilitate the exchange of silks and 
scissors, and occasionally trotted on similar er- 
rands, businesslike and brisk, down the plank walk 
to the store. Sometimes they asked here for the 
wrong thing. Sometimes they forgot utterly what 
they were to ask for, and a return trip was in 
order. Sometimes they demanded some article a 
stranger to invention, unheard of on sea or shore. 
Thus cruelly was their ignorance of fabric played 
upon by the ungrateful and freakish fair, and the 
little store rang with laughter at the discomfiture 
of the young Mercury so humbly bearing the mes- 



THE JUGGLER. 309 

sages of the deities on the veranda; for the store 
was crowded, too, chiefly -v^ith ladies in the fresh- 
est of morning- costumes, and Royce, as he paused 
at the door, realized that this was no time to claim 
the attention of the smooth-faced clerk. That 
functionary was as happy as a salesman ever gets 
to be. There was not a yard of any material or 
an article in his stock that did not stand a fair 
chance of immediate purchase as wearing api^arel 
or stage properties. Tableaux, and a ball after- 
ward in the dress of one of the final pictures, were 
in immediate contemplation, as Royce gathered 
from the talk. This was evidently an undertaking 
requiring some nerve on the part of its projectors, 
in so remote a place, where no opportunities of 
fancy costumes were attainable save what invention 
might contrive out of the resources of a modern 
summer wardrobe and the haphazard collections of 
a watering-place store. Perhaps this added ele- 
ment of jeopardy and doubt and discovery and the 
triumphs of ingenuity heightened the zest of an 
amusement which with all necessary appliances 
might have been vapid indeed. 

Royce could not even read the titles of the books 
on the shelf at this distance, above the heads of 
the press, and he turned away to await a more 
convenient season, realizing that he had attracted 
naught but most casual notice, and feeling at ease 
to perceive, from one or two specimens to-day 
about the place, that mountaineers from the im- 
mediate vicinity were no rarity at New Helvetia; 



310 THE JUGGLER. 

their errands to sell fruit to the guests or vegeta- 
bles or venison to the hotel being doubtless often 
supplemented by a trifle of loitering to mark the 
developments of a life so foreign to their expe- 
rience. As he strolled along the plank walk, his 
supersensitive consciousness was somewhat assuaged 
as by a sense of invisibility. Every one was too 
much absorbed to notice him, and he in his true 
self supported no responsibility, since jjoor Lucien 
Royce was dead, and John Leonard was merely a 
stray mountaineer, looking on wide-eyed at the 
doings of the grand folk. 

From that portion of the building which he had 
learned contained the ballroom he heard the clat- 
ter of hammer and nails. The stage was probably 
in course of erection, and, idly following the sound 
along a low deserted piazza toward one of the 
wings, he stood at length in the doorway. He 
gazed in listlessly at the group of carpenters work- 
ing at the staging, the frame being already up. 
A blond young man, in white flannel trousers and 
a pink-and-white-striped blazer, was descanting 
with knowingness and much easy confidence of 
manner upon the way in which the curtain should 
draw, while the proprietor, grave, saturnine, with 
a leaning toward simj)licity of contrivance and 
economy in execution, listened in noncommittal 
silence. The wind blew soft and free through the 
opposite windows. Royce looked critically at the 
floor of the ballroom. It was a good floor, a very 
good floor. Finally he turned, with only a gentle 



THE JUGGLER. 311 

melancholy in his forced renunciation of youthful 
amusements, with the kind of sentiment, the sense 
of far remove, which might animate the ghost of 
one untimely snatched away, now vaguely awaiting 
its ultimate fate. He continued to stroll along, 
entering presently the quadrangle, and noting here 
the grass and the trees and the broad walks; the 
romping children about the band-stand in the 
centre, dainty and fresh of costume and shrill of 
voice; the chatting groups of old colored nurses 
who supervised their play. One was pushing a 
perambulator, in which a precocious infant, totally 
ignoring passing adults, after the manner of his 
kind, fixed an eager, intent, curious gaze upon an- 
other infant in arms, who so returned this interested 
scrutiny that his soft neck, as he twisted it over the 
shoulder of his nurse, was in danger of dislocation. 

"Tu'n roun' yere, chile!" she admonished him 
as if he were capable of understanding, while she 
shifted him about in her arms to cut off the vision 
of the object of interest. "Twis' off yer hade 
lak some ole owel, fus' t'ing ye know; owel tu'n 
his hade ef ye circle roun' him, an' tu'n an' tu'n 
till his ole fool hade drap off. Did n' ye know 
dat, honey? Set disher way. Dat 's nice! " 

She almost ran against the juggler as she 
rounded the corner. He caught the glance of her 
eye, informed with that contempt for the poor 
whites which is so marked a trait of negro charac- 
ter, as she walked on, swaying gently from side to 
side and crooning low to the baby. 



312 THE JUGGLER. 

He did not care to linger longer within the 
premises. He could not even enjoy the relapse 
into old sounds and sights in a guise in which 
he was thought so meanly of, and which so ill 
beseemed his birth and quality. When he issued 
from the quadrangle, at the lower end of the 
veranda, he found he was nearer the descent to 
the spring than to the store. He thought he 
would slip down that dank, bosky, deserted path, 
make a circuit through the woods, and thus regain 
the road homeward without risking further obser- 
vation and the laceration of his quivering pride. 
False pride he thought it might be, but accoutred, 
alas, with sensitive fibres, with alert and elastic 
muscles for the writhings of torture, with delicate 
membranes to shrivel and scorch and sear as if it 
were quite genuine and a laudable possession. 

The ferns with long wide-spreading fronds, and 
great mossy boulders amongst the dense under- 
growth, pressed close on either hand, and the thick 
interlacing boughs of trees overarched the precipi- 
tous vista as he went down and down into its green- 
tinted glooms. Now and again it curved and 
sought a more level course, but outcropping ledges 
interposed, making the way rugged, and soon cliffs 
began to peer through the foliage, and on one side 
they overhung the path ; on the other side a pre- 
cipice lurked, glimpsed through boughs of trees 
whose trunks were fifty feet lower on a slope be- 
neath. An abrupt turn, — the odor of ferns 
blended with moisture came delicately, elusively 



THE JUGGLER. 313 

fragrant; a great fracture yawned amidst the 
rocks, and there, from a cleft stained deeply ochre- 
ous with the oxide of iron, a crystal-clear rill fell 
so continuously that it seemed to possess no faculty 
of motion in its limpid interlacings and plaitings 
as of silver threads; only below, where the natural 
stone basin — hewn out by the constant beating of 
the current on the solid rock — overflowed, could 
the momentum and power of the water be inferred 
from its swift escape, bounding over the precipice 
and rushing off in great haste for the valley. The 
proprietor had had the good taste to preserve the 
woodland character of the place intact. No sign 
that civilization had ever intruded here did Royce 
mark, as he looked about, save a book on a rock 
hard by. Some one had sought this sylvan soli- 
tude for a quiet hour in the fascinations of its 
pages. 

He hesitated a moment, then advanced cau- 
tiously and laid his hand upon it. How long, how 
long — it seemed as if in another existence — since 
he had had a book like this in his hand! He 
caught its title eagerly, and the name of the 
author. They were new to him. He turned the 
pages with alert interest. The book had been 
published since the date of his exile. Once more 
he fluttered the leaves, and, like some famished, 
thirsting wretch drinking in great eager gulps, he 
began to absorb the contents, his eyes glowing like 
coals, his breath hot, his hands trembling with 
nervous haste, knowing that his time for this 



314 THE JUGGLER. 

draught of elixir, this refreshment of his soul, was 
brief, so brief. It would never do, for a man so 
humbly clad as he was, to be caught reading with 
evident delight a scholarly book like this. When 
at last he threw himself down amongst the thick 
and fragrant mint beside the rock, his shoulders 
supported on an outcropping ledge, his hat fallen 
on the groimd, he had forgotten all thought of cau- 
tion, he was not conscious how the time sped by. 
His eyes were alight, moving swiftly from side to 
side of the page. His face glowed with responsive 
enthusiasm to the high thought of the author. 
His troubles had done much to chasten its expres- 
sion and had chiseled its features. It had never 
been so serious, so intelligent, so refined, as now. 
He did not see how the shadows shifted, till in this 
umbrageous retreat a glittering lance of sunlight 
pierced the green gloom. He was not even aware 
of another presence, a sudden entrance. A young 
lady, climbing up from the precipitous slope below, 
started abruptly at sight of him, jeopardizing her 
already uncertain footing, then stared for an in- 
stant in blank amazement. 

So precarious was the footing where she had 
paused, however, that there was no safe choice but 
to continue her ascent. He did not heed more the 
rustle of her garments, as she struggled to the level 
ground, than the rustle of the leaves, or the rattle 
of the little avalanche of gravel as her foot upon 
the verge dislodged the pebbles. Only when the 
shaft of sunlight struck full upon her white pique 



THE JUGGLER. 315 

dress, and the reflected glare was flung over the 
page of the book and into his eyes with that reful- 
gent quality which a thick white fabric takes from 
the sun, he glanced up at the dazzling apparition 
with a galvanic start which jarred his every fibre. 
He stained at her for one moment as if he were in 
a dream ; he had come from so far, — so very far ! 
Then he grasped his troublous identity, and sprang 
to his feet in great embarrassment. 

"I must apologize," he said, with his most cour- 
teous intonation, " for taking the liberty of reading 
your book." 

"Not at all," she murmured civilly, but still 
looking at him in much surprise and with intent 
eyes. 

Those eyes were blue and soft and lustrous; the 
lashes were long and black; the eyebrows were so 
fine, so perfect, so delicately arched, that they 
might have justified the writing of sonnets in their 
praise. That delicate smalMloman nose one knew 
instinctively she derived from a father who had 
followed its prototype from one worldly advance- 
ment to another, and into positions of special 
financial trusts and high commercial consideration. 
It would give distinction to her face in the years 
to come, when her fresh and delicate lips should 
fade, and that fluctuating sea-shell pink hue should 
no longer embellish her cheek. Her complexion 
was very fair. Her hair, densely black, showed 
under the brim of the white sailor hat set straight 
on her small head. She was tall and slender, and 



316 THE JUGGLER. 

wore her simple dress with an effect of finished 
elegance. She had an air of much refinement and 
unconscious dignity, and although, from her alert 
volant pose, he inferred that she was ready to 
terminate the interview, she did not move at once 
when he had tendered the book and she had taken 
it in her hand. 

"I merely intended to glance at the title," he 
went on, still overwhelmed to be caught in this 
literary poaching, and hampered by the conscious- 
ness that his manner and his assumed identity had 
become strangely at variance. "But I grew so 
much interested that I — I — quite lost myself." 

She had some thought in mind as she looked 
down at the book in her gloved hand, then at him. 
The blood stung his cheek as he divined it. In 
pity for his evident poverty and hankering for the 
volume, she would fain have bid him keep it. But 
with an exacting sense of conventionality, she said 
suavely, though with impersonal inexpressiveness, 
"It is no matter. I am glad it entertained you. 
Good-morning. " 

He bowed with distant and unpresuming polite- 
ness, and as she walked, with a fine poise and a 
quick elastic gait, along the shadowy green path, 
vanishing at the first turn, he felt the blood beat- 
ing in his temples with such marked pulsation that 
he could have counted the strokes as he stood. 

Did she deem him, then, only a common moun- 
taineer, a graceless unlettered lout? She rated 
him as less than the dust beneath her feet. He 



THE JUGGLER. 317 

could not endure that she should think of him 
thus. How could she be so obtuse as to fail to 
see that he was a gentleman for all his shabby 
gear ! It was in him for a moment to hasten after 
her and reveal his name and quality, that she 
might not look at him as a creature of no worth, 
a being of a different sphere, hardly allied even to 
the species she represented. 

He was following on her path, when the reflex 
sentiment struck him. "Am I mad?" he said to 
himself. "Have I lost all sense of caution and 
self-preservation? " 

He stood panting and silent, the wounded look 
in his eyes so intense that by. some subtle sym- 
pathetic influence they hurt him, as if in the ten- 
sion of a strain upon them, and he passed his 
hand across them as he took his way back to the 
spring. 

Did he wish the lady to recognize his station in 
life, and speculate touching his name? He was 
fortunate in that she was so young, for to those of 
more experience the incongruities of the interest 
manifested by an uncouth and ignorant mountain- 
eer in a metaphysical book like that might indeed 
advertise mystery and provoke inquiry. Was he 
hurt because the lady, noting his flagrant poverty, 
had evidently wished to bestow upon him the vol- 
ume which he had been reading with such delight, 
— so little to her, so infinite to him ? And should 
he not appreciate her delicate sense of the appro- 
priate, that had forbidden this generosity, consid- 



318 THE JUGGLER. 

ering her youth, and the fact that he was a stranger 
and seemingly a rustic clown? He rather won- 
dered at the scholarly bent of lier taste in litera- 
ture, and her avoidance of the mirthful scenes of 
the veranda, that she might spend the morning in 
thought so fresh, so deep, so exj)ansive. It hardly 
seemed apposite to her age and the tale that the 
thermometer told, for this was a book for study. 
There was something simple-hearted in his accept- 
ance of this high intellectual ideal which all at 
once she represented to him. A few months ago 
he might have scoffed at it as a jDose; he would at 
least have surmised the fact, — a mistake had been 
caused by a similarity of binding with that of a 
popular novel of the day with which she had hoped 
to while away the time in the cool recesses beside 
the spring, and thus the volume had been thrown 
discarded on the rock, while she climbed the slopes 
searching for the Chilhowee lily. 

The fire of humiliation still scorched his eyes, 
and his deep depression was patent in his face and 
figure, when he reached the Sims house at last, 
and threw himself down in a chair in the passage. 
One elbow was on the back of the chair, and he 
rested his chin in his hand as he looked out gloom- 
ily at the mountains that limited his world, and 
wished that he had never seen them and might 
never see them again. The house was full of the 
odor of frying bacon, for there was no whiff of 
wind in the Cove. The rooms were close and hot, 
and the sun lay half across the floor, and burnt. 



THE JUGGLER. 319 

and shimmered, and dazzled the eye. The suffo- 
cating odor of the blistering clapboards of the roof, 
and of the reserves of breathless heat stored in the 
attic, penetrated the spaces below. Jane Ann Sims 
sat melting by degrees in the doorway, where, if a 
draught were possible to the atmosphere from any 
of the four quarters, she might be in its direct 
route. Meantime she nodded oblivious, and her 
great head and broad face dripping with moisture 
wabbled helplessly on her bosom. 

Euphemia, coming out suddenly Avith a pan of 
peas to shell for dinner, and seeking a respite 
from the heat of the fire, caught sight of Royce 
with a radiant look of delight to which for his life 
he could not respond. She was pallid and limp 
with the work of preparing dinner, and even in 
the poetic entanglements of her curling shining 
hair she brought that most persistent aroma of the 
frying-pan. The coarse florid calico, the mis- 
shapen little brogans which she adjusted on the 
rung of her chair as she tilted it back against the 
wall with the pan in her lap, her drawling voice, 
the lapses of her ignorant speech, her utter lack 
of all the graces of training and culture, impressed 
him anew with the urgency of a fresh discovery. 

"What air it ez ails you-uns?" she demanded, 
with a certain anxiety in her eyes. "Ye hev acted 
sorter cur'ous all this week. Do you-uns feel sick 
ennywhars? " 

"Lord, no!" exclaimed the juggler irritably; 
"there 's nothing the matter with me." 



320 THE JUGGLER. 

She looked at him in amazement for a moment; 
he had had no words for her of late but honeyed 
praise. The change was sudden and bitter. There 
was an appealing protest in her frightened eyes, 
and the color rushed to her face. 

He had no affinities for the role of fickle-minded 
lover, and he was hardly likely to seek to palliate 
the cruelty of inconstancy. He took extreme 
pride in being a man of his word. The sense of 
honor, which was all the religion he had and 
chiefly active commercially, was evident too in his 
personal affairs. Was it her fault, he argued, his 
poor little love, that she was so hopelessly rustic? 
Had he not sought her when she was averse to 
him, and won her heart from a man she loved, 
who would never have thought himself too good 
for her? He would not apologize, however. He 
would not let her think that he had been vexed 
into hasty speech by the mere sight of her, the 
sound of her voice. 

"You just keep that up," he said, conserving 
an expression of animosity before which she visibly 
quaked, "and you '11 have Mrs. Sims brewing her 
infernal herb teas for me in about three minutes 
and a quarter. I want you to stop talking about 
my being ill, short off." 

As she gazed at him she burst into a little trill 
of treble laughter, that had nevertheless the sug- 
gestion of tears ready to be shed, in the extremity 
of her relief. 

"I have walked twenty miles to-day, and it's 



THE JUGGLER. 321 

a gooclish tramp in the heat of the day, — over to 
New Helvetia and back; and I'm fagged out, 
that 'sail." 

Her equilibrium was restored once more, and 
her eyes were radiant with the joy of loving and 
being loved. Yet she paused suddenly, her hand 

— he winced that he should notice how rough and 
large it was, the nails blunt and short and broad 

— resting motionless on the edge of the pan, as 
she said, "I wisht ye would gin up goin' ter that 
thar hotel. Ye look strange ter-day," — her eyes 
searched his face as if for an interpretation of 
something troublous, daunting, — "so strange! so 
strange!" 

"How? " he demanded angrily, knitting his 
brows. 

"Ez ef — ef ye hed been 'witched somehows," 
she answered, "like I 'low folks mus' look ez 
view a witch in the woods an' git under some un- 
y earthly spell. The woods air powerful thick 
over to'des New Helveshy, an' folks 'low they air 
fairly roamin' with witches an' sech. I ain't 
goin' ter gin my cornsent fur ye ter go through 'em 
no mo'." 

She pressed a pod softly, and the peas flew out 
and rattled in the pan, and the tension was at an 
end. He felt that she was far too acute, however. 
He was sorry she had ever known of his visits 
to New Helvetia. She should suppose them dis- 
continued. He certainly coveted no feminine 
espionage. 



322 THE JUGGLER. 

He could not escape the thought of the place 
now. The face of the beautiful stranger was be- 
fore his eyes every waking hour; and there were 
many, for the nights had lost their balm of sleep. 
The tones of her voice sounded in his ear. The 
delicate values of her refined bearing, the sugges- 
tions of culture and charm and high breeding 
which breathed from her presence like a perfume, 
had inthralled his senses as might the subtile and 
aerial jiotencies of ether. He had no more voli- 
tion. He could not resist. Yet it was not, he 
stipulated, this stranger whom he adored. It was 
what she represented. He perceived at last that 
for him the artificialities of life were the realities. 
Even his own cherished gifts were matters of sed- 
ulous cultivation of certain natural aptitudes, the 
training of which was more remarkable than the 
endowment ; and indeed, of what worth the latent 
talent without that culture which gives it use, and 
in fact recognized being at all? The status had 
an inherent integral value, the human creature was 
its mere incident. Nature was naught to him. 
The triumphs of the world are the uses man has 
made of nature; the forces that have lifted him 
from plane to plane, and sublimated the mere in- 
telligence, which he shares with the beast, into in- 
tellectuality, which is the extremest development 
of mind. 

As he argued thus abstractly, the longing to see 
her again grew resistless. Not himself to be seen, 
and never, never again by her! He would only 



THE JUGGLER. 323 

look at her from afar, as one — even so humble a 
wretch — might gaze at some masterpiece of the 
artist's craft, might kneel in abasement and self- 
abnegation before some noble shrine. He craved 
to see her in her splendid young loveliness and 
girlish enjoyment, in gala attire, at the grand fete 
on which the youth of New Helvetia were expend- 
ing their ingenuity of invention and expansive 
energy. Even prudence could not say him nay. 
Did fate grudge him a glimpse that he might gain 
at the door, or while between the dances she walked 
with her partner on the moonlit veranda? Who 
would note a flitting ghost, congener of the shadow, 
lurking in the deep glooms beneath the trees and 
looking wistfully at the world from which he had 
been snatched away? 

It was with a lacerating sense of renunciation 
that he parted with each instant of the time during 
the momentous evening when he might have beheld 
her in the tableaux ; for he could with certainty fix 
upon the place she occupied, having gathered from 
the talk at the store the date and order of the 
festivities. But he could not rid himself of the 
Sims family. It had been vaguely borne in upon 
Mrs. Sims that he was growing tired of them, and 
in sudden alarm lest Euphemia's happiness prove 
precarious, and with that disposition to assume the 
blame not properly chargeable to one's seK which 
is common to some good people, who perceive no 
turpitude in lying when the deceit is practiced only 
on themselves, she made herself believe that the 



324 TEE JUGGLER. 

change was merely because she had been remiss in 
her attentions to her guest, and had treated him 
too much and too informally as one of the family. 
She smiled broadly upon him, with each of her 
many dimples in evidence, which had never won 
upon him, even in the days of his blandest con- 
tentment. She detained him in conversation. 
She requested that he would favor her with the 
exact rendition of the air to which he sang the 
words of Rock of Ages, one Sunday morning when 
he had heard the bells of the St. Louis church 
towers ringing from out the misty west; and as 
he dully complied, his tones breaking more than 
once, she accommodatingly wheezed along with 
him, quite secure of his commendation. For Jane 
Ann Sims had been a "plumb special singer" 
when she was young and slim, and no matter how 
intelligent a woman may be, she never outgrows 
her attractions — in her own eyes. 

At last the house was still, and the juggler, 
having endured an agony of suspense in his deter- 
mination to suppress all demonstrations of interest 
in New Helvetia, lest the intuition of the two 
women should divine the cause from even so slight 
indicia as might baffle reason, found himself free 
from question and surmise and comment. He 
was off in the darkness, with a furtive noiseless 
speed, like some wild errant thing of the night, 
native to the woods. He had a sense of the 
shadow and of the sheen of a fair young moon in 
the wilderness : he knew that the air was dank and 



THE JUGGLER. 325 

cool and that the dew fell ; he took note mechan- 
ically of the savage densities of the wilds when he 
heard the shrill blood-cnrdling quavering of a 
catamount's scream, and he laid his grasp on the 
handle of a sharp bowie-knife that he wore in his 
belt, which he had bought for a juggling trick that 
he had not played at the curtailed performance in 
the schoolhouse, and he wished that it were instead 
Tubal Cain's shooting-iron. But beyond this his 
mind was a blank. He did not think ; he did not 
feel ; his every capacity was concentrated upon his 
gait and the speed that he made. He did not 
know how short a time had elapsed when the series 
of jjoints of yellow light from the ballroom win- 
dows, like a chain of glowing topaz, shone through 
the black darkness and the misty tremulous dim- 
ness of the moon. His teeth were set; he was 
fit to fall; he paused only a moment, leaning on 
the rail of the bridge to draw a deep breath and re- 
lax his muscles. Then he came on, swift, silent, 
steady, to the veranda. 

Around the doors, outside the ballroom, were 
crowded figures, whose dusky faces and ivory teeth 
caught the light from within and attested the en- 
joyment of the servants of the place as spectators 
of the scene. He saw through an aperture, as one 
of them moved aside, a humble back bench against 
the wall, on which sat two or three of the moun- 
taineers of the vicinity, calmly and stolidly looking 
on, without more facial expression of opinion than 
Indians might have manifested. He would not 



326 THE JUGGLER. 

join this group, lest she might notice him in their 
company, which he repudiated, as if his similarity 
of asi)ect were not his reliance to save all that he 
and men of his kind held dear. The windows were 
too high from the ground to afford a glimpse of the 
interior; he stood irresolute for a moment, with 
the strains of the waltz music vibrating in his very 
heart-strings. Suddenly he marked how the ground 
rose toward the further end of the building. The 
last two windows evidently were partially blockaded 
by the slope so close without, and could serve only 
purposes of ventilation. Responsive to the thought, 
he climbed the steep slant, dark, dewy, and soli- 
tary, and, lying in the soft lush grass, looked down 
upon the illuminated ballroom. 

At first he did not see her. With his heart 
thumping much after the fashion of the bass viol, 
till it seemed to beat in his ears, he gazed on the 
details of a scene such as he had thought never to 
look upon again. He recognized with a sort of 
community spirit and pleasure how well the frolic- 
some youth had utilized their slender opportuni- 
ties, so far from the emporiums of civilization. 
Great branching ferns had adequately enough sup- 
plied the place of palms, their fronds waving 
lightly from the walls in every whirling breeze 
from the flight of the dance. Infinite lengths of 
vines — the Virginia creeper, the ground ivy, and 
the wild grape — twined about the pillars, and 
festooned the ceiling, the band-stand, and the 
chandeliers. For the first time he was made aware 



THE JUGGLER. 327 

of the decorative values of the blackberry, when 
it is red, and, paradoxically, green. The unripe 
scarlet clusters were everywhere massed amidst the 
vines with an effect as brilliant as holly. All the 
aisles of the surrounding woods had been explored 
for wild flowers. Here and there were tables laden 
with great masses of delicate blossoms, and from 
time to time young couples paused in their aimless 
strolling back and foi'th, — for the music had ceased 
for the nonce, — and examined specimens, and dis- 
puted over varieties, and apparently disparaged 
one another's slender scraps ^of botany. 

The band, high in their cage, — prosperous, 
pompous darkies, of lofty manners, but entertain- 
ing with an air of courteous condescension any 
request which might be preferred, in regard to the 
music, by the young guests of the hotel, — looked 
down upon the scene complacently. Against the 
walls were ranged the chaperons in their most 
festal black attire, enhanced by fine old lace and 
fragile glittering fans and a somewhat dazzling 
display of diamonds. The portly husbands and 
fathers, fitting very snugly in their dress suits, 
hovered about these borders with that freshened 
relish of scenes of youthful festivity which some- 
how seems increased in proportion as the possibil- 
ity and privilege of participation are withdrawn. 
Some of the younger gentlemen also wore merely 
the ordinary evening dress, the difficulty of evolv- 
ing a fancy costume, or a secret aversion to the 
characters they had represented in the tableaux, 



328 THE JUGGLER. 

warranting this departure from the spirit of the 
occasion. 

Everywhere, however, the younger feminine 
element blossomed out in poetic guise. Here and 
there fluttered fairies with the silver-flecked gauze 
wings that Royce had seen a-making, and Titania 
still wore her crown, although Bottom had thrown 
his pasteboard head out of the window, and was 
now a grave and sedate young American citizen. 
Red Riding-Hood and the Wolf still made the 
grand tour in amicable company, and Pocahontas, 
in a fawn-tinted cycling-skirt and leggings and a 
red blanket bedizened with all the borrowed beads 
and feathers that the Springs could afPord, was 
esteemed characteristic indeed. Davy Crockett 
had a real coonskin cap which he had bought for 
lucre from a mountaineer, and which he intended 
to take home as a souvenir of the Great Smokies, 
although he was fain to carry it now by the tail 
because of the heat; but he invariably put it on 
and drew himself up to his tableau estimate of 
importance whenever one of the elderly ladies 
clutched at him, as he passed, to inquire if he 
were certainly sure that the long and ancient flint- 
lock (borrowed) which he bore over his shoulder 
was unloaded. There had evidently been a tableau 
representing Flora's court or similar blooming 
theme, since so many personified flowers were 
wasting their sweetness on the unobservant and 
unaccustomed air. The wild rose was in several 
shades of fleecy pink, festooned with her own gar- 



THE JUGGLER. 329 

lands. A wallflower — a clashing blonde — was in 
brown and yellow, and had half the men in the 
room around her. 

Suddenly — Lucien Royee's heart gave a great 
throb and seemed to stand still, for, on the arm of 
her last partner, coming slowly down the room 
until she stood in the full glow of the nearest chan- 
delier, all in white, in shining white satin, with a 
grace and dignity which embellished her youth, 
was she whom he had so longed to see. Her bare 
arms and shoulders were of a soft whiteness that 
made the tone of the satin by contrast glazing and 
hard. Her delicate head, with its black hair 
arranged close and high, had the pose of a lily on 
its stalk. Scattered amid the dense dark tresses 
diamonds glittered and quivered like dewdrops. 
Her face had that flower-like look not uncommon 
among the type of the very fair women with dark 
hair from the extreme South. Over the white 
satin was some filmy thin material, like the deli- 
cate tissues of a corolla; and only when he had 
marked these liliaceous similitudes did he observe 
that it was the Chilhowee lily which she had 
chosen to represent. Now and again that most 
ethereal flower showed amongst the folds of her 
skirt. A cluster as fragile as a dream lay on her 
bosom, and in her hand she carried a single blos- 
som, poetic and perfect, trembling on its long 
stalk. 

There rose upon the air a soft welling out of 
the music. The band was playing "Home, Sweet 



330 THE JUGGLER. 

Home." She had moved out of the range of his 
vision. There was a murmur of voices on the 
veranda as the crowd emerged. The lights were 
abruptly quenched in darkness. And he laid his 
head face downward in the deep grass and wished 
he might never lift it again. 



XII. 

Owen Haines spent many a lonely hour, in 
these clays, at the foot of a great tree in the woods, 
riving" poplar shingles. Near by in the green and 
gold glinting of the breeze-swept undergrowth an- 
other great tree lay prone on the ground. The 
space around him was covered with the chips hewn 
from its bole, — an illuminated yellow -hued carpet 
in the soft wavering emerald shadows. The smooth 
shingles, piled close at hand, multiplied rapidly as 
the sharp blade glided swiftly through the poplar 
fibres. From time to time he glanced up expect- 
antly, vainly looking for Absalom Tynes; for it 
had once been the wont of the young preacher to 
lie here on the clean fresh chips and talk through 
much of the sunlit days to his friend, who wel- 
comed him as a desert might welcome a summer 
shower. He would talk on the subject nearest the 
hearts of both, his primitive theology, — a subject 
from which Owen Haines was otherwise debarred, 
as no other ministerial magnate would condescend 
to hold conversation on such a theme with the 
laughing-stock of the meetings, whose aspirations 
it was held to be a duty in the cause of religion to 
discourage and destroy if might be. Only Tynes 
understood him, hoped for him, felt with him. 



332 THE JUGGLER. 

But Tynes was now at the schoolhoiise In the 
Cove, listening in fascinated interest to the juggler 
as he recited from memory, and himself reading 
in eager and earnest docility, copying his master's 
methods. 

Therefore, when the step of a man sounded 
along the bosky path which Haines had worn to 
his working-place, and he looked up with eager an- 
ticipation, he encountered only disappointment at 
the sight of Peter Knowles approaching through 
the leaves. 

Knowles paused and glanced about him with 
withering disdain. "Tynes ain't hyar," he ob- 
served. "I dunno ez I looked ter view him, 
nuther." 

He dropped down on the fragrant carpet of 
chips, and for the first time Haines noticed that 
he carried, after a gingerly fashion, on the end of 
a stick, a bundle apparently of clothes, and plen- 
tifully dusted with something white and powdery. 
Even in the open air and the rush of the summer 
wind the odor exhaled by quicklime was powerful 
and pungent, and the scorching particles came 
flying into Haines's face. As he drew back 
Knowles noticed the gesture, and adroitly flung 
the bundle and stick to leeward, saying, "Don't it 
'pear plumb cur'ous ter you-uns, the idee o' a 
minister o' the gorspel a-settin' out ter I'arn how 
ter read the Bible from a oncon verted sinner? I 
hearn this hyar juggler-man 'low ez he warn't even 
a mourner, though he said he hed suthin' ter mourn 



THE JUGGLER. 333 

over. An' I '11 sw'ar he hev," he added signifi- 
cantly, "an' he may look ter hev more." 

The poplar slivers flew fast from the keen blade, 
and the workman's eyes were steadfastly fixed on 
the shingle growing in his hand. 

Peter Knowles chewed hard on his quid of to- 
bacco for a moment; then he broke out abruptly, 
"Owen Haines, I knows ye want ter sarve the 
Lord, an' thar 's many a way o' doin' it besides 
preachin', else I 'd be a-preachin' myself." 

Such was the hold that his aspiration had taken 
upon Haines's mind that he lifted his head in 
sudden expectancy and with a certain radiant sub- 
missiveness on his face, as if his Master's will 
could come even by Peter Knowles ! 

"I brung ye yer chance," continued Knowles. 
Then, with a quick change from a sanctimonious 
whine to an eager, sharp tone full of excitement, 
"What ye reckon air in that bundle?" 

Haines, surprised at this turn of the conversa- 
tion, glanced around at the bundle in silence. 

"An' whar do ye reckon I got it?" asked 
Knowles. Then, as Owen Haines's eyes expressed 
a wondering question, he went on, mysteriously 
lowering his voice, "I fund it in my rock-house, 
— that big cave o' mine whar I stored away the 
lime I burned on the side o' the mounting — this 
bundle war flung in thar an' kivered by quick- 
lime!" 

Haines stared in blank amazement for a mo- 
ment. "I 'lowed ye hed plugged up the hole 



334 THE JUGGLER. 

goin' inter yer cave, ter keep the lime dry, with a 
big boulder." 

"Edzac'ly, edzac'ly!" Knowles assented, his 
close-set eyes so intent upon Haines as to put him 
out of coimtenance in some degree. 

Haines sought to withdraw his glance from their 
baleful significant expression, but his eyelids fal- 
tered and quivered, and he continued to look win- 
cingiy at his interlocutor. "I 'lowed 'twar too 
heavy for enny one man ter move," he commented 
vaguely, at last. 

'"Thout he war liolped by the devil," Knowles 
stipulated. 

There was a pause. The young workman's 
hand was still. His companion's society did not 
accord with his mood. The loneliness had been 
soft and sweet, and of peaceful intimations. His 
frequent disappointments were of protean guise. 
Where was that work for the Master that Peter 
Knowles had promised him? 

"Owen Haines," cried Peter Knowles suddenly, 
"hev that thar man what calls hisself a juggler- 
man done enny thin' but harm sence he hev been 
in the Cove an' the mountings?" 

Haines, the color flaring to his brow, laid quick 
hold on his shingle-knife and rived the wood apart ; 
his breath came fast and his hand shook, although 
his work was steady. He was all unnoting that 
Peter Knowles was watching him with an un- 
guarded eye of open amusement, and a silent sneer 
that left long tobacco -stained teeth visible below 



THE JUGGLER. 835 

the curling upper lip. But a young fool's folly is 
often propitious for the plans of a wiser man, and 
Knowles was not ill pleased to descry the fact that 
the relations between the two could not admit of 
friendship, or tolerance, or even indifference. 

"Fust," he continued, "he gin that onholy show 
in the church-house, what I never seen, but it hev 
set folks powerful catawampus an' hendered reli- 
gion, fur the devil war surely in it." 

Owen Haines took off his hat to toss his long 
fair hair back from his brow, and looked with 
troubled, reflective eyes down the long aisles of the 
gold-flecked verdure of the woods. 

"Then he tricked you-un& somehows out'n yer 
sweetheart, what ye hed been keepin' company 
with so long." 

Haines shook his head doubtfully. "We-uns 
quar'led," he said. "I dunno ef he hed nuthin' 
ter do with it." 

"Did Phemie an' you-uns ever quar'l 'fore he 
kem ter Sims's?" demanded the sly Knowles. 

They had never quarreled before Haines "got 
religion" and took to "prayin' fur the power." 
He had never thought the juggler chargeable with 
these differences, but the fallacy now occurred to 
him that they might have been precipitated by 
Royce's ridicule of him as a wily device to rid 
her of her lover. His face grew hot and angry. 
There was fire in his eyes. His lips parted and 
his breath came quick. 

"He hev toled off Tynes too," resumed Knowles, 



336 THE JUGGLER. 

with a melancholy intonation. "He hev got all 
the lures and witchments of the devil at command. 
I kem by the church-house awhile ago, an' I hearn 
him an' Tynes in thar, speakin' an' readin'. An' 
I sez ter myself, sez I, ' Pore Owen Haines, up 
yander in the woods, hev got nuther his frien', 
now, nor his sweetheart. Him an' Phemie keeps 
company no mo' in this worl'.' " 

There was a sudden twitch of Haines's features, 
as if these piercing words had been with some 
material sharpness thrust in amongst sensitive tis- 
sues. It was all true, all true. 

The iron was hot, and Peter Knowles struck. 
"That ain't the wust," he said, leaning forward 
and bringing his face with blazing eyes close to 
his companion. "This hyar juggler hev killed a 
man, an' flung his bones inter the quicklime in 
my rock -house." 

Haines, with a galvanic start, turned, pale and 
aghast, upon his companion. He could only gasp, 
but Knowles went on convulsively and without 
question: "I s'picioned him from the fust. He 
stopped thar at the cave whar I war burnin' lime 
the night o' the show, an' holped ter put it in 
outer the weather bein' ez the rain would slake 
it. An' he axed me ef quicklime would sure burn 
up a dead body. An' when I told him, he turned 
as he went away an' looked back, smilin' an' sorter 
motionin' with his hand, an' looked back agin, an' 
looked back." 

He reached out slowly for the stick with the 



THE JUGGLER. 337 

bundle tied at the end, and dragged it toward him, 
the breath of the scalding lime perceptible as it 
was drawn near. 

"Las' week, one evenin' late," he said in a 
lowered voice and with his eyes alight and glan- 
cing, "hevin' kep' a watch on this young buzzard, 
an' noticin' him forever travelin' the New Hel- 
veshy road what ain't no business o' his'n, I 
'lowed I 'd foUer him. An' he kerries a bundle. 
He walks fast an' stops short, an' studies, an' 
turns back suddint, an' stops agin, an' whirls 
roun', an' goes on. An' his face looks like death! 
An' sometimes he stops short to sigh, ez ef he 
could n't get his breath. But he don't go ter New 
Helveshy. He goes ter my cave. An' he hev got 
breath enough ter fling away that tormented big 
boulder, an' toss in these gyarmints, an' churn the 
lime over 'em with a stick till he hed ter hold his 
hand over his eyes ter keep his eyesight, an' fling- 
back the boulder, an' run oft" faster 'n a fox along 
the road ter Sims's." 

There was a long silence as the two men looked 
into each other's eyes. 

"What air ye tellin' this ter me fur?" said 
Haines at last, struggling with a mad impulse of 
hope — of joy, was it ? For if this were true, — 
and true it must be, — the spurious supplantation 
in Euphemia's affections might soon be at an end. 
If her love could not endure ridicule, would it 
condone crime? All might yet be well; justice 
tardily done, the law upheld; the intruder removed 



338 THE JUGGLER. 

from the sphere where he had occasioned such 
woe, and the old sweet days of love's young dream 
to be lived anew. 

"Fur the Marster's sarvice," said the wily hypo- 
crite, "I sez ter myself, ' Owen Haines won't see 
the right tromped on. He won't see the ongodly 
flourish. He won't see the wolf a-lopin' through 
the fold. He won't hear in the night the blood o' 
Abel cry in' from the groun' agin the guilty Cain, 
an' not tell the sher'ff what air no furder off, jes' 
now, 'n 'Possum Cross-Roads. ' " 

"Why don't you-uns let him know yerse'f?" 
demanded Haines shortly. 

"Waal, I be a-settin' up nights with my sick 
nephews: three o' them chil'n down with the 
measles, an' my sister an' brother-in-law bein' so 
slack -twisted I be 'feared they 'd gin 'em the 
wrong med'cine ef I warn't thar ter gin d'rec- 
tions." His eye brightened as he noted Haines 
reaching forward for the end of the stick and 
slowly drawing the bundle toward him. 

It is admitted that a leopard cannot change his 
spots, and, without fear of successful contradic- 
tion, one may venture to add to the illustrations of 
immutability that a coward cannot change his tem- 
perament. Now the fact that Peter Knowles was 
a coward had been evinced by his conduct on 
several occasions within the observation of his com- 
patriots. His craft, however, had served to adduce 
mitigating circumstances, and so consigned the mat- 
ter to oblivion that it did not once occur to Haines 



THE JUGGLER. 339 

that it was fear which had evolved the subterfuge 
of enlisting his well-known enthusiasm for religion 
and right, and his natural antagonism against the 
juggler, in the Master's service. On the one hand, 
Knowles dreaded being called to account for what- 
ever else might be found unconsumed by the lime 
in the grotto, did he disclose naught of his dis- 
covery. On the other hand, the character of in- 
former is very unpopular in the mountains, owing 
to the revelations of moonshining often elicited by 
the rewards offered for the detection of the infringe- 
ment of the revenue laws. Persons of this class 
indeed sometimes receive a recompense in another 
metal, which, if not so satisfactory as current coin, 
is more conclusive and lasting. It was the recollec- 
tion of leaden tribute of this sort, should the mat- 
ter prove explicable, or the man escape, or the 
comitryside resent the appeal to the law, which 
induced Peter Knowles to desire to shift upon 
Haines the active responsibility of giving informa- 
tion: his jealousy in love might be considered a 
motive adequate to bring upon him all the retribu- 
tions of the recoil of the scheme if aimed amiss. 

Knowles watched the young man narrowly and 
with a glittering eye as, with a trembling hand and 
a look averse, Haines began to untie the cord which 
held the package together. 

"He killed the man, Owen, ez sure ez ye air 
livin', an' flunged his bones in the quicklime, an' 
now he flunged in his clothes," Knowles was say- 
ing as the bundle gave loose in the handling. 



340 THE JUGGLER. 

Drawing back with a sense of suffocation as a 
cloud of minute particles of quicklime rose from 
the folds of the material, Owen Haines neverthe- 
less recognized upon the instant the garments 
which the juggler himself had worn when he first 
came to the Cove, the unaccustomed fashion of 
which had riveted the young mountaineer's atten- 
tion for the time at the " show " at the church-house. 

With a certain complex duality of emotion, he 
experienced a sense of dismay to note how his 
heart sank with the extinguishment of his hope 
that the man might prove a criminal and that this 
discovery might rid the country of him. How ill 
he had wished him ! Not only that the fierce blast 
of the law might consume him, but, reaching back 
into the past, that he might have wrought evil 
enough to justify it and make the retribution sure ! 
With a pang as of sustaining loss he gasped, 
"Why, these hyar gyarmints air his own wear. 
I hev viewed him in 'em many a time whenst he 
fust kem ter the Cove ! " 

Knowles glared at him in startled doubt, and 
slowly turned over one of the pointed russet shoes. 
"He hed 'em on the night he gin the show in the 
Cove," said Haines. 

"I seen him that night," said Knowles conclu- 
sively. "He hed on no sech cur'ous clothes ez 
them, else I 'd hev remarked 'em, sure! " 

"Ye 'lowed 't war night an' by the flicker o' 
the fire, an' ye war in a cornsider'ble o' a jigget 
'bout'n yer lime." 



THE JUGGLER. 341 

" Naw, sir ! naw, sir ! he heel on no sech coat ez 
that, ennyhow," protested Knowles. Then, with 
rising anger, "Ye air a pore shoat fur sense, Owen 
Haines! Ef they air his gyarmints, what's the 
reason he hid 'em so secret an' whar the quicklime 
would deestroy 'em; bein' so partic'lar ter ax o' 
me ef 'twould burn boots an' clothes an' bone, — 
hone, too?" 

"I dunno," said Haines, at a loss, and turning 
the black-and-red blazer vaguely in his hands. 

"I do; them folks over ter New Helveshy wears 
sech fool gear ez these," Knowles insisted, from 
his superior knowledge, for in the interest of his 
lime-trade he had visited New Helvetia more than 
once, — a rare trip for a denizen of Etowah Cove. 

"Thar ain't nobody missin' at New Helveshy! " 
Haines argued, against his lingering hope. 

"How do you-uns know?" exclaimed Knowles 
hurriedly, and with a certain alert alarm in his 
face. "Somebody comin' ez never got thar! 
Somebody goin' ez never got away!" He had 
risen excitedly to his feet. What ghastly secret 
might be hidden beneath the residue of quicklime 
in that dark cavern, the responsibility possibly to 
be laid at his door ! 

Owen Haines, looking up at him with childlike 
eyes, was slowly studying his face, — a fierce face, 
with the savagery of his cowardice as predatory an 
element as the wantonness of his malice. 

"These hyar air his clothes," Haines reiterated; 
"I 'members 'em well. This hyar split buttonhole 
at the throat " — 



342 THE JUGGLER. 

"That 's whar he clutched the murdered one," 
declared Knowles tumultuously. 

— "an' these water-marks on these hyar shoes, 

— they hed been soaked, — an' this hyar leather 
belt, whar two p'ints hed been teched through 
with a knife-blade, stiddier them round holes, ter 
draw the belt up tighter 'n it war made ter be 
wore, — I could swar ter 'em, — -an' this hyar" — 

Knowles looked down at him in angry doubt. 
"Shucks," he interrupted, "ye besotted idjit! I 
dunno what ailed me ter kem ter you-uns. I 
'lowed ye war so beset ter do — yer — Marster's 

— work! " with a mocking whine. "But ye ain't. 
Ye seek yer own chance! The Lord tied yer 
tongue with a purpose, an' he wasted no brains 
on a critter ez he didn't 'low ter hev gabblin' 
round the throne. Ye see ter it ye say nuthin' 
bout'n this, else jestice '11 take arter you-uns, too, 
an' ye won't be much abler ter talk ter the court 
o' law 'n the court o' the Lawd." He wagged his 
head vehemently at the young man, while kneeling 
to make up anew the bundle of garments, until 
the scorching vapor compelled him to turn aside. 
When he arose, he stood erect for one doubtful 
instant. Then, satisfied by the reflection that for 
the sake of his own antagonism toward the juggler 
the jealous and discarded lover would do naught 
to frustrate the vengeance that menaced Royce, he 
turned suddenly, and, with the bundle swaying as 
before on the end of the stick, started without a 
word along the path by which he had come, leav- 



THE JUGGLER. 343 

ing Owen Haines gazing after him till he disap- 
peared amongst the leaves. 

How long Haines sat there staring at the vanish- 
ing point of that bosky persj)ective he could hardly 
have said. When he leaped to his feet, it was 
with a repentant sense of the waste of time and 
the need of haste. His long, lank, slouching fig- 
ure seemed incompatible with any but the most 
languid rate of progression ; and indeed it was not 
his habit to get over the ground at the pace which 
he now set for himself. This was hardly slack- 
ened through the several miles he traversed until 
he reached the schoolhouse, which he found silent 
and empty. After a wild-eyed and hurried sur- 
vey, he set forth anew, tired, breathless, his shoul- 
ders bent, his head thrust forward, his gait un- 
equal; for he was not of the stalwart physique 
common amongst the youth of the Cove. He 
reached the Sims cabin, panting, anxious-eyed, 
and hardly remembering his grievances against 
Phemie when he saw her in the passage. She 
looked at him askance over her shoulder as she 
rose in silent disdain to go indoors. 

"I ain't kem hyar ter plague you-uns, Phemie," 
he called out, divining her interpretation of his 
motive. "I want ter speak ter that thar juggler- 
raan," — he could not bring himself to mention 
the name. 

She paused a moment, and he perceived in sur- 
prise that her proud and scornful face bore no 
tokens of happiness. Her lips had learned a pa- 



344 THE JUGGLER. 

thetic droop ; her eyelids were heavy, and the long 
lashes lifted barely to the level of her glance. 
The words in a low voice, "He ain't hyar," were 
as if wrung from her by the necessity of the mo- 
ment, so unwilling they seemed, and she entered 
the house as Mrs. Sims flustered out of the oppo- 
site door. 

" Laws-a-massy, Owen Haines," she exclaimed, 
"ye better lef be that thar juggler-man, ez ye 
calls him ! He could throw you-uns over his shoul- 
der. Ye '11 git inter trouble, meddlin'. Phemie 
be plumb delighted with her ch'ice, an' a gal hev 
got a right ter make a ch'ice wunst in her life, 
ennyhows." 

He sought now and again to stem the tide of 
her words, but only when a breathless wheeze 
silenced her he found opportunity to protest that 
he meant no harm to the juggler, and he held no 
grudge against Euphemia; that he was the bearer 
of intelligence important to the juggler, and she 
would do her guest a favor to disclose his where- 
abouts. 

There were several added creases — they could 
hardly be called wrinkles — in Mrs. Sims's face of 
late, and a certain fine network of lines had been 
drawn about her eyes. She was anxious, troubled, 
irritated, all at once, and entertained her own 
views touching the admission of the fact of the 
juggler's frequent and lengthened absence from 
his beloved. Euphemia 's fascinations for him 
were evidently on the wane, and although he was 



TEE JUGGLER. 345 

gentle and considerate and almost humble when 
he was at the house, he seemed listless and melan- 
choly, and had grown silent and unobservant, and 
they had all marked the change. 

"We-uns kin hardly git shet o' the boy," said 
Mrs. Sims easily, lying in an able-bodied fashion. 
""But I do b'lieve ter-day ez he hev tuk heart o' 
grace an' gone a-huntin'." 

Owen Haines's countenance fell. Of what avail 
to follow at haphazard in the vastness of the moun- 
tain wilderness ? There was naught for him to do 
but return to his work, and wait till nightfall 
might bring home the man he sought. Meantime, 
the sheriff was as near as 'Possum Cross-Roads, 
only twelve miles down the valley. Peter Knowles 
would probably give the information which he had 
tried to depute to the supplanted lover. Haines 
did not doubt now the juggler's innocence, but 
he appreciated the cruel ingenuity of perverse cir- 
cumstances, and he had felt the venom of malice. 
Thus it was that he had sought to warn the man of 
the discovery which Peter Knowles had made, and 
of the very serious construction he was disposed to 
place upon the facts. 



XIII. 

When this crisis supervened, Lueien Royce 
was at New Helvetia Springs, at the bowling-alley. 
His resolution that the beautiful girl, whom he 
had learned to adore at a distance, should never 
see him again in a guise so unworthy of him, of 
his true position in life, and of his antecedents, 
collapsed one day in an incident which was a 
satiric comment uj)on its imj)ortance. He met her 
unexpectedly in the mountain woods, within a 
few miles of the Cove, one of a joyous young 
equestrian party, and riding like the wind. The 
plainness of the black habit, the hat, the high close 
white collar, seemed to embellish her beauty, in 
that no adornments frivolously diverted the atten- 
tion from the perfection of its detail. The flush 
on her cheek, the light in her eye, the lissome 
grace of her slender figure, all attested a breezy 
delight in the swift motion ; her smile shone down 
upon him like the sudden revelation of a star in 
the midst of a closing cloud, when he sprang for- 
ward and handed her the whip which she had 
dropped at the moment of passing, before the 
cavalier at her side could dismount to recover it. 
A polite inclination of the head, a murmur of 
thanks, a broadside of those absolutely unrecogniz- 
ing eyes, and she was gone. 



THE JUGGLER. 347 

She evidently had no remembrance of hmi. 
His alert intuition could have detected it in her 
face if she had. For her he had no existence. 
He thought, as he walked on into the silence and 
the wilderness, of his resolution and his self-denial, 
and he laughed bitterly at the futility of the one 
and the pangs of the other. He need never wince 
to be so lowly placed, so mean, so humble, for she 
never thought of him. He need not fear to go 
near her, to haunt, like the ghost he was, her 
ways in life, for she would never look at him, she 
would never realize that he was near; for most 
people are thus insensible of spectral influences. 

When he sat for the first time on a bench 
against the wall, by the door of the bowling-alley, 
with two or three mountaineers whose lethargic 
curiosity — their venison or peaches having been 
sold — was excited in a degree by the spectacle of 
the game of tenpins, he had much ado to control 
the agitation that beset him, the pangs of humili- 
ation. But after this day he came often, avail- 
ing himself of the special courtesy observed by 
the players in providing a bench for the moun- 
taineers, as spectators, who were indeed never 
intrusive or out of place, and generally of most 
listless and uninterested attitude toward the freaks 
and frivolities of New Helvetia. This attention 
seemed a gracious and kindly condescension, and 
flattered a conscious sentiment of noblesse oblige. 
There were other spectators, of better quality, on 
the opposite side of the long low building, — the 



348 THE JUGGLER. 

elders among the sojourners at New Helvetia 
Springs, — while down the centre, between the 
two alleys, were the benches on which the players 
were ranged. 

She was sometimes among these, always grace- 
ful and girlish, with a look of innocence in her 
eyes like some sweet child's, and wearing her youth 
and beauty like a crown, with that unique touch 
of dignity suggestive of a splendid future develop- 
ment, and that these days, lovely though they 
might be, were not destined to be her best. One 
might have pitied the hot envy he felt toward the 
youths who handed her the balls and applauded 
her play, and hung about near her, and chatted in 
the intervals, — so foolish, so hopeless, so bitter 
it was. Sometimes he heard her responses : little 
of note, the talk of a girl of his day and world, 
but animated with a sort of individuality, a some- 
thing like herself, — or did he fancy it was like no 
one else? He had met his fate too late; this was 
the one woman in all the world for him. She 
could have made of him anything she would. His 
heart stirred with a vague impulse of reminiscent 
ambitions that might have been facts had she come 
earlier. He loved her, and he felt that never be- 
fore had he loved. The slight spurious evanescent 
emotion, evoked from idleness or folly or caprice, 
in sundry remembered episodes of his old world, 
or evolved in the desert of his loneliness for Eu- 
phemia, — how vain, how unreal, how ephemeral, 
how unjustified! But she who would have been 



THE JUGGLER. 349 

the supreme power in his life had come at last — 
and had come too late. How truly he reasoned he 
knew well, as he sat in his humble garb amongst 
his uncouth associates on the segregated bench, 
and heard the thunder of the balls and the swift 
steps of the lightly passing figures at the head of 
the alley; but surely he should not have been ca- 
pable of an added pang when he discerned, with a 
sense almost as impersonal as if he were indeed 
the immaterial essence he claimed to be, her fate 
in the identity of a lately arrived guest. This was 
a man of middle height and slender, about thirty- 
five years of age, with a slight bald spot on the 
top of his well-shaped head. He had a keen nar- 
row face, an inexpressive calm manner, and was 
evidently a personage of weight in the world of 
men, sustaining a high social and financial consid- 
eration. He did not take part in the game. He 
leaned against a pillar near her, and bent over 
her, and talked to her in the intervals of her 
play. He had apparently little affinity for youth- 
ful amusements, and spent much of his time with 
her parents. His mission here was most undis- 
guised, and it seemed to the poor juggler that 
the fortunate suitor was but a personified conven- 
tionality, whom no woman could truly love, and 
who could truly love no woman. 

When once Royce had acquired the sense of 
invisibility, he put no curb on his poor and humble 
cravings to see her, to hear the sound of her voice 
albeit she spoke only to others. Every day found 



350 THE JUGGLER. 

him on the mountaineers' bench at the bowling- 
alley, sometimes alone, sometimes in grotesque 
company, the ridicule, he knew, of the young and 
thoughtless; and he had no care if he were ridi- 
culed too. Sometimes she came, and he was 
drearily hapjjy. Frequently she was absent, and 
in dull despair he sat and dreamed of her till the 
game was done. He grew to love the inanimate 
things she touched, the dress she wore; he even 
loved best that which she wore most often, and his 
heart lightened whenever he recognized it, as if the 
sight of it were some boon of fate, and their com- 
mon preference for it a bond of sympathy. Once 
she came in late from a walk in the woods, wearing 
white, with a purple cluster of the wild verbena at 
her bosom. There was a blossom lying upon the 
floor after the people were all gone. He saw it as 
it slipped down, and he waited, and then, in the 
absolute solitude, with a furtive gesture he picked 
it up, and after that he always wore it, folded in 
a bit of paper, over his heart. 

In the midst of this absorbing emotion Lucien 
Eoyce did not feel the pangs of supplantation till 
the fact had been repeatedly driven home. When, 
returning from New Helvetia, he would find Jack 
Ormsby sitting on the steps of the cabin porch, 
talking to Euphemia, he welcomed as a relief the 
opportunity to betake himself and his bitter brood- 
ing thoughts down to the bank of the river, where 
he was wont to walk to and fro under the white 
stars, heedless of the joyous voices floating down 



THE JUGGLER. 351 

to him, deaf to all save the inflections of a voice 
in his memory. He began gradually to note with 
a dull surprise Euphemia's scant, overlooking 
glance when her eyes must needs turn toward him ; 
her indifferent manner, — even averse, it might 
seem; her disaffected languor save when Jack 
Ormsby's shadow fell athwart the door. In some 
sort Royce had grown obtuse to all except the sen- 
timent that enthralled him. Under normal cir- 
ciunstances he would have detected instantly the 
flimsy pretense with which she sought to stimulate 
his jealousy, to restore his allegiance, to sustain 
her pride. She had not dreamed that her hold 
upon his heart, gained only by reason of his lone- 
liness and despair and the distastefulness of his 
surroundings, had slackened the instant a deep 
and real love took possession of him. She had 
not divined this hopeless, silent love — from afar, 
from infinite lengths of despair ! — for another. 
She only knew that somehow he had grown obliv- 
ious of her, and was much absent from her. This 
touched her pride, her fatal pride ! And thus she 
played off Jack Ormsby against him as best she 
might, and held her head very high. 

The sense of desertion inflicted upon him only 
a dull pain. He said listlessly to himself, his 
pride untouched, that she had not really loved 
him, that she had been merely fascinated for a 
time by the novelty of the "readin's," and now 
she cared for them and him no more. He recalled 
the readiness with which she had forsworn her 



352 THE JUGGLER. 

earlier lover, when his conscience had conflicted 
with her pride, and this seeming fickleness was 
accented anew in the later change. Royce tacitly 
acquiesced in it, no longer struggling as he had 
done at first with a sense of loyalty to her, but 
giving himself up to his hopeless dream, precious 
even in its conscious futility. 

How long this quiescent state might have proved 
more pleasure than pain it is hard to say. There 
suddenly came into its melancholy serenities a wild 
tumult of uncertainty, a mad project, a patent 
possibility that set his brain on fire and his heart 
plunging. He argued within himself — with some 
doubting, denying, forbidding instinct of self- 
immolation, as it seemed, that had somehow at- 
tained full control of him in these days — that in 
one sense he was fully the equal of Miss Fordyce, 
as well born, as well bred, as she, as carefully 
trained in all the essentials that regulate polite 
society. She would sustain no derogation if he 
could contrive an entrance to her social circle, and 
meet her there as an equal. He had overheard in 
the fragmentary gossip mention of people in New 
Orleans, familiars of her circle, to whom he was 
well known. He did not doubt that his father's 
name and standing would be instantly recognized 
by her father. Judge Archibald Fordyce, — the 
sojourners at New Helvetia were identifiable to 
him now, — or indeed by any man of consequence 
of that gentleman's acquaintance. Under normal 
circumstances the formality of an introduction 



THE JUGGLER. * 353 

would be a matter of course. If she had chanced 
to spend a winter in St. Louis, Royce would doubt- 
less have danced with her on a dozen different 
occasions; he wondered blankly if he would then 
have adequately valued the privilege ! He felt now 
that he would give his life for a touch of her hand, 
a look of her eyes fixed upon him observingly; 
how the utter neutrality of her glance hurt him ! 
He would give his soul for the bliss of one waltz. 
He trembled as he realized how possible, how 
easily and obviously practicable, this had be- 
come. 

For the tableaux and fancy-dress ball had been 
so relished by the more juvenile element of New 
Helvetia that the successor of that festivity was 
already projected. This was to be a grotesquerie 
in calico costumes and masks, chiefly of facetious 
characters. The masks were deemed essential by 
the small designers of the entertainment, since the 
secret of the various disguises had not been care- 
fully kept, and these vizards were ingenuously 
relied on to protect the incognito of certain per- 
sonages garbed, with the aid of sympathetic elders, 
as Dolly Varden, Tilly Slowboy(with a rag-doll 
baby furnished with a head proof against banging 
on door-frames or elbows), Sir John Falstaff, three 
feet high, Robinson Crusoe, and similar celebrities. 
The whole affair was esteemed a tedious super- 
fluity by the youths of twenty and a few years 
upward, already a trifle blase, who sometimes lin- 
gered and talked and smoked in the bowling-alley 



354 THE JUGGLER. 

after the game was finished and the ladies had 
gone. It was from overhearing this chat that 
Royce learned that although the majority of the 
yomig fellows, tired with one effort of devising 
costumes, had declined to go in calico and in 
character, still, in deference to the style of the 
entertainment and the importunity of the children 
who had projected it, they had agreed to attend 
in mask. Their out-of-door attire of knicker- 
bockers and flannel shirts and blazers ought to be 
deemed, they thought, shabby enough to appease 
the "tacky" requirements of the juvenile man- 
agers, who were pleased to call their burlesque 
masquerade a "tacky party." 

Then it was that Royce realized his opportunity. 
The knickerbockers and flannel shirt, the red-and- 
black blazer and russet shoes, in which he had 
entered Etowah Cove, now stowed away in the 
roof -room of Tubal Cain Sims's house, were not 
more the worse for wear than much of such attire 
at New Helvetia Springs after a few weeks of 
mountain rambles. Ten minutes in the barber- 
shop of the hotel, at a late hour when it would be 
deserted by its ordinary patrons, would put him 
in trim for the occasion, and doubtless its function- 
aries who had never seen him would fancy him in 
this dress a newly arrived guest of the hotel or of 
some of the New Helvetia summer cottagers. He 
had even a prevision of the free and casual gesture 
with which he would hand an attendant a quarter 
of a dollar and send across the road to the store 



THE JUGGLER. 355 

for a mask. And then — and then — he could feel 
already the rhythm of the waltz music beating in 
every pulse; he breathed even now the breeze 
quickening" in the motion of the dance, endowed 
with the sweetness of the zephyrs of the seventh 
heaven. It was she — she alone — whom he would 
care to approach; the rest, they were as naught! 
One touch of her hand, the rapture of one waltz, 
and he would be ready to throw himself over the 
bluff; for he would have attained the uttermost 
happiness that earth could bestow upon him now. 

And suddenly he was ready to throw himself 
over the bluff that he should even have dreamed 
this dream. For all that his pulses still beat to 
the throb of that mute strain, that his eyes were 
alight with an unrealized joy, that the half quiver, 
half smile of a visionary expectation lingered at 
his lips, the red rush of indignant humiliation 
covered his face and tingled to the very tips of his 
fingers. He was far on the road between the Cove 
and the Springs, and he paused in the solitude 
that he might analyze this thing, and see where 
he stood and whither he was tending. He, of all 
men in the world, an intruder, a partaker of plea- 
sures designed exclusively for others ! He to wear 
a mask where he might not dare to show his face ! 
He to scheme to secure from her, — from her ! — 
through false pretenses, under the mistake that he 
was another, a notice, a word, chance phrases, the 
touch of her confiding hand, the ecstasy of a waltz ! 
He had no words for himself! 



356 THE JUGGLER. 

He was an exile and penniless. He had no 
identity. He could reveal himself only to be 
falsely suspected of a vile robbery in a position of 
great trust; any lapse of caution would consign 
him to years of unjust imjDrisonment in a felon's 
cell. He was the very sport of a cruel fate. He 
had naught left of all the lavish earthly endow- 
ments with which he had begun life save his own 
estimate of 'his own sense of honor. But this was 
still precious to him. Bereft as he was, he was 
still a gentleman at heart. He claimed that, — he 
demanded of himself his own recognition as such. 
Never again, he determined, as he began to walk 
slowly along the road once more, never again 
should expert sophistries tempt him. He would 
not argue his equality with her, his birth, his edu- 
cation, the social position of his j^eople. It was 
enough to reflect that if she knew all she would 
shrink from him. He would not again seek refuge 
in the impossibility that his identity could be dis- 
covered as a guest at the ball. He would not 
plead as a set-off against the deception how in- 
nocent its intention, how transient, how venial a 
thing it was. And lest in his loneliness, — for 
since the atmosphere of his old world had once 
more inflated his lungs he was as isolated in the 
Sims household, he found its air as hard to breathe, 
as if he were in an exhausted receiver, — in his 
despair, in the hardship of his lot, in the deep 
misery of the first true, earnest, and utterly hope- 
less love of his life, some fever of wild enterprise 



THE JUGGLER. 357 

should rise like a delirium in his brain, and con- 
fuse his sense of right and wrong, and palsy his 
capacity for resistance, and counsel disguise, and 
destroy his reverent appreciation of what was due 
to her, he would put it beyond his power ever to 
masquerade in the likeness of his own self and the 
status of his own true position in the world; he 
would render it necessary that he should always 
ajspear before her in the absolutely false and con- 
temptible role of a country boor, an uncouth, un- 
lettered clown. 

At the paradox of this conclusion he burst into 
a grim laugh ; then — for he would no longer med- 
dle with these subtle distinctions of right and 
wrong, where, in the metamorphoses of deduction, 
the false became true, and interchangeably the 
true was false — he began to run, and in the strong 
vivacity of his pride in his physical prowess he 
was able to reflect that better time was seldom 
made by an amateur, unless for a short spurt, 
than the pace he kept all the way to the Sims 
cabin. He would not let himself think while in 
the roof -room he rolled the jaunty suit into a bun- 
dle. He set his teeth and breathed hard as he 
recognized a certain pleasure which his finger-tips 
derived from the very touch of the soft, fine tex- 
ture of the cloth, and realized how tenuous was 
the quality of his resolution, how quick he must 
needs be to carry into effect the conclusions of his 
sober judgment, lest he waver anew. He was out 
again and a mile away before he began to debate 



358 THE JUGGLER. 

the disposition which it would be best to make of 
the bundle under his arm. He recalled with a 
momentary regret Mrs. Sims's kitchen fire, over 
which doubtless Euphemia was now bending, busy 
with the johnny-cake for the evening meal. He 
dismissed the thought on the instant. The femi- 
nine ideas of economy would never suffer the de- 
struction of so much good all-wool gear, whatever 
its rescue might cost in the future. Moreover, it 
would be inexplicable. He could get a spade and 
bury the bundle, — and dig it up, too, the next 
time this mad, unworthy temptation should assail 
him. He could throw it into the river, — and fish 
it out again. 

Suddenly he remembered the lime-kiln. The 
greater portion of its product had been used long 
ago, but the residue still lay unslaked in the dry 
cavern, and more than once, in passing, he had 
noted the great boulder rolled to the ajDcrture 
and securely closing it against the entrance of air 
and moisture. The place was in the immediate 
vicinity, and somehow, although he had been here 
often since, the predominant impression in his 
mind, when he reached the jutting promontory of 
rock and gazed down at the sea of foliage in the 
Cove, that surely had once known the ebb and flow 
of tides other than the spring bourgeonings and 
the autumn desiccations, was the reminiscence of 
that early time in Etowah Cove when he had stood 
here in the white glare from the lime-kiln and 
watched that strange anamorphosis of the lime- 



THE JUGGLER. 359 

burner's face through the shimmering medium of 
the uprising heat. He seemed to see it again, — 
all unaware that now, in its normal proportions, 
that face looked down upon him from the height 
of the cliff above, although its fright, its sur- 
prise, its crafty intimations, its malevolence, dis- 
torted it hardly less than the strange effects of 
the writhing currents of heat and air in that dark 
night so long ago. 

The young man hesitated once more. He had 
a certain conscientious reverence for property and 
order; it was with a distinct wrench of volition 
that he would destroy aught of even small value. 
But as he seated himself on the ledge, shaking out 
the natty black~and-red blazer, he recognized the 
melody that was mechanically murmuring through 
his lips, — again, still again, the measures of a 
waltz, that waltz through whose enchanted rhythms 
he had fancied that he and she might dreamily drift 
together. He sprang to his feet in a panic. With 
one mighty effort he flung the great boulder aside. 
Hastily he dropped the garments with the shoes, 
belt, and long blue hose, into the cavern, and with 
a staff stirred the depths of the lime till it rose 
above them. More than once he was fain to step 
back from the scorching air and the smarting white 
powder that came in puffs from the interior. 

"That's enough," he muttered mockingly after 
a moment, as he stood with his muscles relaxed, 
sick with the sentiment of the renunciation of the 
world which the demolition of the sophisticated 



360 



THE JUGGLER. 



garb included in its significance. "I cannot un- 
dertake to dance with any fine lady in this tog- 
gery now; she 'd think I had come straight from 
hell. And," with a swift change of countenance, 
"so I have ! — so I have ! " 

Then, with his habitual carefulness where any 
commercial interest, however small, was concerned, 
he roused himself, wrenched the great boulder 
back into its place, noting here and there a crev- 
ice, and filling it with smaller stones and earth 
that no air might gain admission; and, with one 
final close scrutiny of the entrance, he took his way 
into the dense laurel and the gathering dusk, all 
unaware of the j^eering, suspicious, frightened face 
and angry eyes that watched him from the summit 
of the cliff above. 

The discipline of life had certain subduing effects 
on Lucien Royce. He felt very much tamed when 
next he took a seat upon the bench j)laced aside in 
the corner of the bowling-alley, to affect to watch 
the game, but in truth to give his humble despair 
what added pain it might deem pleasure and clutch 
as solace, by the sight of her smiles won by hap- 
pier men, the sound of her voice, the meagre reali- 
ties of the day to supplement the lavish and fan- 
tastic visions of his dreams. He had reached the 
point where expectation fails. He looked only for 
the eventless routine of the alley, — the hour of 
amusement for the others, the lingering separation, 
the silence of the deserted building, and the living 
on the recollection of a glance of the eye, a turn 



THE JUGGLER. 361 

of the head, a displaced tendril of hair, softly 
curling, until to-morrow, or the next day, or the 
next, should give him the precious privilege of 
making such observations for the sustenance of his 
soul through another interval of absence. Sud- 
denly, his heart, dully beating on through these 
dreary days, began to throb wildly, and he gazed 
with quickening interest at the scene before him : 
the long narrow shell of a building with the fre- 
quent windows where the green leaves looked in, 
the brown unplastered walls, the dark rafters ris- 
ing into the shadowy roof, and the crossing of the 
great beams into which records of phenomenal 
successions of ten strikes had been cut by the 
vaunting winners of matches, with their names 
and the dates of the event, the year of the Lord 
methodically affixed, as if these deeds were such 
as were to be cherished by posterity. Down the 
smooth and shining alley a ball was rolling. Miss 
Gertrude Fordyce, wearing a sheer green-and- 
white dress of simple lawn and a broad hat trimmed 
with ferns, was standing at the head of the alley, 
about to receive her second ball from the hands of 
a blond young cavalier in white flannels. Royce 
had seen him often since the morning when he had 
observed him giving his valuable advice as to the 
erection of the stage in the ballroom, and knew 
that he was Millden Seymour, just admitted to the 
bar, with a reputation for talent, an intelligent 
face, and a smooth and polished honhomie of man- 
ner ; he was given to witty sayings, and was a little 



362 THE JUGGLER. 

too intent upon the one he was exploiting at this 
moment to notice that the pins at the further end 
of the alley had not been set up, the hotel func- 
tionary detailed for that duty not having arrived. 
Miss Fordyce hesitated, with the ball in her hand, 
in momentary embarrassment, the color in her 
cheeks and a laugh in her eyes. 

Royce sprang up, and running lightly down by 
the side of the alley placed the pins in readiness 
to receive her second ball; then stood soberly 
aside, his hat in his hand, as if to watch the execu- 
tion of the missile. 

" How very polite ! " said one of the chaperons 
over her knitting to another. "I often notice 
that young man. He seems to take so much inter- 
est in the game." 

This trifling devoir, however, which Royce had 
not hesitated to offer to a lady, savored of servility 
in its appropriation by a man. Nevertheless, he 
was far too discreet, too well aware of what was 
due to Miss Fordyce, to allow the attention to seem 
a personal tribute from him. He silently cursed 
his officiousness, notwithstanding, as he bent down 
to set the tenpins in place for the second player, 
who happened to be the smart young cavalier. 
Only with an effort Royce conserved his blithe air 
and a certain amiable alacrity as through a round 
or two of the game he continued to set up the pins ; 
but when the flustered and hurried bell-boy whose 
duty he had performed came panting in, Royce 
could have broken the recreant's head with right 



THE JUGGLER. 363 

good will, and would not restrain a tendency to 
relapse into his old gait and pose, which had no 
savor of meekness, as he sauntered up the side of 
the alley to his former seat beside the mountain- 
eers, who had gazed stolidly at his performance. 

Royce noted that one or two of the more athletic 
of the young men had followed his movements with 
attention. "Confound you!" he said to himself 
irritably. "I am man enough to throw you over 
that beam, and you are hardly so stupid as to fail 
to know it." 

Miss Fordyce had not turned her eyes toward 
him, — no more, he said to himself, than if he had 
been the side of the wall. And notwithstanding 
the insignia of civilization thrust out of sight into 
the quicklime and the significance of their destruc- 
tion, and the flagellant anguish of the discipline 
of hopelessness and humiliation, he felt this as a 
burning injustice and grief, and the next instant 
asked himself in disdain what could such a man 
gain if she should look at him in his lowly and 
humble estate? 

Royce brooded gloomily upon these ideas during 
the rest of the game; and when the crowd had 
departed, and he had risen to take leave of the 
scene that he lived by, he noticed, with only the 
sense that his way was blocked, several of the 
young men lingering about the door. They had 
been glancing at him, and as one of them, — it 
was Seymour, — in a very propitiatory manner, 
approached him, he became suddenly aware that 



364 THE JUGGLER. 

they had been discussing the appropriateness of 
offering him a gratuity for setting up the tenpins 
in the heat and dust while they played. Seymour 
was holding out their joint contributions in his 
hand; but his affability was petrified upon his 
countenance as his mild eyes caught the fiery 
glance which Royce flung at the group, and marked 
the furious flush which suffused neck and face and 
ears as he realized their intention. It was a mo- 
ment of mutual embarrassment. They meant no 
offense, and he knew it. Had he been what he 
seemed, it would have been shabby in the last 
degree to accept such timely offices with no tender 
of remuneration. Royce 's ready tact served to 
slacken the tension. 

"Here," he said abruptly, bvit despite his easy 
manner his voice trembled, "let me show you 
something." 

He took a silver quarter of a dollar from the 
handful of small change still mechanically ex- 
tended, and, turning to a table which held a tray 
with glasses, he played the trick with the goblet 
and the bit of money that had interested the 
captain of the ill-fated steamboat on the night 
when Lucien Royce perished so miserably to the 
world. It was with a good-natured feigning of 
interest that the young men pressed round, at first, 
all willing to aid the salving of the honest pride 
which their offering had evidently so lacerated. 
But this gave way to an excitement that had rarely 
been paralleled at New Helvetia Springs, as feat 



THE JUGGLER. 365 

succeeded feat. The juggler was soon eager to 
get away, having served his purpose of eluding 
their bounty, but this was more difficult than he 
had anticipated. He feared troublesome questions, 
but beyond a " Say, how in thunder did you learn 
all this?" there were none; and the laconic re- 
sponse, "From a traveling fellow," seemed to allay 
their curiosity. 

After a little he forgot their ill-starred benevo- 
lence ; his spirits expanded in this youthful society, 
the tone of which was native to him, and from 
which he had long been an outcast. He began to 
reflect subacutely that the idea of a fugitive from 
justice would not occur to men of their social posi- 
tion so readily as to the mountaineers, who were 
of a more restricted field of speculation and limited 
knowledge of the world. He might seem to these 
summer sojourners, perhaps, a man educated be- 
yond his prospects in life and his station, and 
ashamed of both; such types are not altogether 
unknown. Or perhaps he might be rusticating 
in this humble fashion, being a person of small 
means, or a man with some malady, attracted here 
like others in search of health, but of a lower 
grade of society. "For they tell me," he said 
satirically to himself, "that such people have lungs 
and livers like the best of us ! " He might be a 
native touched by some unhallowed ambition, and, 
having tried his luck in the outer world, flung 
back upon his despised beginnings and out of a 
job. He might be the schoolmaster in the Cove, 



366 THE JUGGLER. 

of a vastly higher grade than the native product, 
doubtless, but these young fellows were uninter- 
ested and unobservant, and hardly likely to evolve 
accurate distinctions. He felt sure that the idea 
of crime would occur to these gay butterflies the 
most remotely of all the possible solutions of the 
anomalies of his jDresence and his garb. He began 
to give himself up unconsciously to the mild plea- 
sure of their association; their chatter, incongru- 
ously enough, revived his energies and solaced 
his feelings like some suave balm. But he exijeri- 
enced a quick repulsion and a start of secret terror 
when two or three, having consulted apart for a 
few moments, joined the group again, and called 
upon him to admire their "cheek," as they phrased 
it, in the proposition they were about to make, — 
no less than that he should consent to perform 
some of his wonderful feats of sleight of hand at 
an entertainment which they projoosed to give 
at New Helvetia. They explained to him, as if 
he had not grievous cause to know already, that 
the young ladies had devised a series of tableaux 
followed by a ball; that the children had scored 
a stunning success in a "tacky party;" that the 
married j^eople had preempted the not very origi- 
nal idea of 2ifete champetre, and to preclude any 
immannerly jumping of their claim had fixed the 
date, wind and weather permitting, and had for- 
mally bidden the guests, all the summer birds at 
New Helvetia Springs. And now it devolved 
upon the young men to do their part toward 



THE JUGGLER. 367 

whiling away time for the general pleasure, — a 
task for which, oddly enough, they were not so 
well equipped as one might imagine. They were 
going to give a dramatic entertainment upon the 
stage which had been erected for the tableaux in the 
ballroom, and which still stood, it being cheaper, 
the proprietor had remarked, to leave it there than 
to erect it anew; for no one could be sure when 
the young people would want it again. There 
would be college songs first, glees and so forth, 
and they made much of the prestige of a banjo- 
player in their ranks. Some acrobatic feats by 
the more athletic youths were contemplated, but 
much uneasiness was felt because a budding littera- 
teur — this was again Mr. Seymour — was giving 
token of a total breakdown in a farce he was writ- 
ing for the occasion, entitled "The New Woman," 
which, although beginning with aplomb and bril- 
liancy, showed no signs of reaching a conclusion, 
— a flattering tribute to the permanence of the 
subject. Mr. Seymour might not have it com- 
pleted by the date fixed. The skill of this amateur 
prestidigitator would serve to fill the breach if the 
playwright should not be ready; and even if inspi- 
ration should smile upon him and bring him in 
at the finish, the jugglery would enliven the long 
waits while the scenes were being prepared and 
the costumes changed. 

Royce, with a sudden accession of prudence, 
refused plumply; a sentiment of recoil possessed 
him. He felt the pressure of the surprise and the 



368 THE JUGGLER. 

uncertainty like a positive pain as lie sat perched 
on the high window-sill, and gazed out into the 
blank unresponsiveness of the undergrowth of the 
forest, wilting in the heat of a hazy noon. The 
young men forbore to urge him; that delicate 
point of offering money, obviously so very nettling 
to his pride, which seemed altogether a superfluous 
luxury for a man in his position, hampered them. 
He might, however, be in the habit of giving ex- 
hibitions for pay; for aught they knew, the dis- 
cussion of the honorarium was in order. But they 
had been schooled by the incident of the morning ; 
even the quarter of a dollar which had lent itself 
to the nimble gyrations of legerdemain had found 
its way by some unimagined art of jugglery into 
the pocket of its owner, and Millden Seymour, 
who had a bland proclivity to smooth rough places 
and enjoy a refined peace of mind, was swearing 
by all his gods that it should stay there until more 
apj)ropriately elicited. 

An odd thing it was, Royce was feeling, that 
without a moment's hesitation he should accept 
the box receipts of the "show" in the Cove, on 
which he had subsisted for weeks, and yet in his 
uttermost necessity he could not have brooked ap- 
pearing as a juggler before the sojourners at New 
Helvetia Springs for his own benefit. The one 
audience represented the general public, he sup- 
posed, and was far from him. The other he felt as 
his own status, his set; and he could as soon have 
handed around the hat, after one of the snug little 



THE JUGGLER. 369 

bachelor dinners he used to be so fond of giving 
in St. Louis, as ask remuneration for his assist- 
ance in this amateur entertainment of the young 
butterflies at New Helvetia. 

He burst into abrupt and sardonic laughter as 
he divined their line of cogitation, and realized 
how little they could imagine the incongruities of 
his responsive mental processes. In the quick 
change from a pondering gravity to this repellent 
gayety there was something of the atmosphere of 
a rude rebuff, and a certain dignity and distance 
informed the manner of the few who still lounged 
about with their cigars. Royce hastened to nullify 
this. They had shown much courtesy to one of 
his low degree, and although he knew — from ex- 
perience, poor fellow — that it was prompted not 
so much by a perception of his deserts as by a 
realization of their own, it being the conduct and 
sentiment which graced them and which they owed 
to persons of their condition, he had no wish to be 
rude, even though it might seem that he owed a 
man in his position nothing. 

"Oh, I'll help you," he said hastily, "though 
we shall have to rig up some sort of properties. 
But I don't need much." 

The talk fell upon these immediately, and he 
forthwith perceived that he was in for it. And 
why not? he asked himself. How did it endanger 
him, or why should he shun it? All the Cove and 
the countryside for twenty miles around knew of 
his feats of sleight of hand; and since accident 



370 THE JUGGLER. 

had revealed his knack to this little coterie of well- 
bred and well-placed young men, why should he 
grudge the exhibition to the few scores of ladies 
and children at New Helvetia, to aid the little 
diversion of the evening? His scruples could have 
no force now, for this would bring him — the 
social pariah ! — no nearer to them than when he 
sat by the tenpin alley and humbly watched his 
betters play. The episode of the jugglery, once 
past, would be an old story and bereft of interest. 
He would have had his little day, basking in the 
sun of the applause of his superiors, and would 
sink back to his humble obscurity at the side of 
the bowling-alley. Should he show any disposi- 
tion to presume upon the situation, he realized 
that they well understood the art of repressing a 
forward inferior. The entertainment contemplated 
no subsequent social festivities. The programme, 
made out with many an interlineation, had been 
calculated to occuj)y all the time until eleven 
o'clock; and Royce, looking at it with the accus- 
tomed eye of a manager of private theatricals, felt 
himself no prophet to discern that midnight would 
find the exhausted audience still seated, enjoying 
that royal good measure of amusement always 
meted out by bounteous amateurs. Throughout 
the evening he would be immured with the other 
young men in the close little pens which served for 
dressing and green rooms, — for all the actors in 
the farce were to be men, — save for the fraction 
of time when his jugglery would necessitate his 



THE JUGGLER. 371 

presence on the stage. True, Miss Fordyce, 
should she patronize the entertainment, might then 
have to look at him somewhat more discerningly 
than she wovdd look at the wall, perhaps! It 
could surely do her no harm. She had seen worse 
men, he protested, with eager self-assertion. She 
owed him that much, — one glance, one moment's 
cognition of his existence. It was not much to 
ask. He had made a great sacrifice for her sake, 
and all unknown to her. He had had regard to 
her estimate of her dignity and held it dear. He 
had done her reverence from the depths of his 
heart, regardless that it cost him his last hope. 

The powers of the air were gradually changing 
at New Helvetia Springs. The light of the days 
had grown dull and gray. Masses of white vapor 
gathered in the valley, rising, and rising, and fill- 
ing all its depths and slopes, as if it were the 
channel of some great river, till only the long 
level line of the summit of the opjDosite range 
showed above the impalpable tides in the simili- 
tude of the further banks of a great stream. It 
was a suggestive resemblance to Lucien Royce, 
and he winced as he looked upon it. He was not 
sorry when it had gone, for the gathering mists 
soon pervaded the forests, and hid cliffs and 
abysses and even the familiar path, save for the 
step before the eye, and in this still whiteness aU 
the world was lost ; at last one could only hear — 
for it too shared the invisibilities — the rain fall- 
ing steadily, drearily, all the day and all the long, 



372 THE JUGGLER. 

long hours of the black night. The bowling-alley 
was deserted; lawn-tennis had succumbed to the 
weather; the horses stood in the stalls. One 
might never know that the hotel at New Helvetia 
Springs existed except that now and again, in 
convolutions of mist as it rolled, a gable high up 
might reveal itself for a moment, or a peaked tur- 
ret ; unless indeed one were a ghost, to find some 
spectral satisfaction in slipping viewless through 
the white enveloping nullity, and gazing in at the 
window of the great parlor, where a log fire was 
ruddily aflare and the elders perused their news- 
papers or worked their tidies, and the youth 
swung in rocking - chairs and exchanged valu- 
able ideas, and played cards, and read a novel 
aloud, and hung in groups about the tortured 
piano. So close stood a poor ghost to the window 
one day, risking observation, that he might have 
read, over the charming outline of sloping shoul- 
ders clad faultlessly in soft gray cloth, the page of 
the novel which Miss Fordyce had brought there 
to catch the light; so close that he might have 
heard every syllable of the conversation which 
ensued when the man in whom he discovered her 
destiny — the cold, inexpressive-looking, personi- 
fied conventionality — came and sat beside her on 
the sofa. But the poor ghost had more scruples 
than reality of existence, and, still true to the sanc- 
tions that control gentlemen in a world in which 
he had no more part, he turned hastily away that 
no syllable might reach him. And as he turned 



THE JUGGLER. 373 

he ran almost into the arms of a man who had 
been tramping heavily up and down the veranda 
in the white obscurities, all unaware of his propin- 
quity. It might have been better if he had ! 



XIV. 

For there were strangers at New Helvetia, — 
two men who knew nobody and whom nobody 
knew. Perhaps in all the history of the hotel this 
instance was the first. The patronage of New 
Helvetia, like that of many other secluded south- 
ern watering-places, had been for generations 
among the same clique of people, all more or less 
allied by kindred or hereditary friendship, or close 
association in their respective homes or in business 
interests, and the traditions of the place were com- 
munity property. So significant was the event 
that it could scarcely escape remark. More than 
one of the hereditary sojourners observed to the 
others that the distance of fifty miles from a rail- 
road over the worst stage-road in America seemed, 
after all, no protection from the intrusion of 
strangers. Here were two men who knew nobody, 
whom nobody knew, and who seemed not even 
to know each other. One was a quiet, decorous, 
reserved person who might be easily overlooked 
in a crowd, so null was his aspect. The other had 
good, hearty, aggressive, rustic suggestions about 
him. He was as stiffly upright as a ramrod, and 
he marched about like a grenadier. He smoked 
and chewed strong, rank tobacco. He flourished 



THE JUGGLER. 375 

a red-bordered cotton handkerchief. He had been 
carefully trimmed and shaved by his barber for 
the occasion, but alas, the barber's embellishments 
can last but from day to day, and the rougher guise 
of his life was betrayed in certain small habitudes, 
conspicuous among which were an obliviousness of 
many uses of a fork and an astonishing temerity 
in the thrusting of his knife down his throat at 
the dinner-table. 

The two strangers appeared on the evening of 
the dramatic entertainment among the other guests 
of the hotel in the ballroom, as spectators of the 
"Unrivaled Attraction" profusely billed in the 
parlor, the office of the hotel, and the tenpin alley. 
The rain dashed tempestuously against the long 
windows, and the sashes now and again trembled 
and clattered in their frames, for the mountain 
wind was rising. Ever and anon the white mist 
that pressed with pallid presence against the panes 
shivered convulsively, and was torn away into the 
wild night and the savagery of the fastnesses with- 
out, returning persistently, as if with some fatal af- 
finity for the bright lights and the warm atmosphere 
that would annihilate its tenuous existence with but 
a single breath. The blended sound of the tor- 
rents and the shivering gusts-was punctuated by the 
slow dripping from the eaves of the covered walks 
within the quadrangle close at hand, that fell with 
monotonous iteration and elastic rebound from the 
flagging below, and was of dreary intimations dis- 
tinct amid the ruder turmoil of the elements. But 



376 THE JUGGLER. 

a cheerful spirit pervaded the well-housed guests, 
j)erhaps the more grateful for the provision for 
pleasantly passing the long hours of a rainy even- 
ing in the country, since it did not snatch them 
from alternative pleasures; from languid strolls 
on moonlit verandas, or contemplative cigars in 
the perfumed summer woods under the stars, or 
choice conferences with kindred spirits in the little 
observatory that overhung the sloj)es. The Un- 
rivaled Attraction had been oijportunely timed to 
fill an absolute void, and it could not have been 
presented before more leniently disposed spectators 
than those rescued from the jaws of unutterable 
ennui. There sounded a continuous subdued ripple 
of laughter and stir of fans and murmur of talk 
amongst them ; but, although richly garbed in 
compliment to the occasion, the brilliancy of their 
appearance was somewhat reduced by the tempered 
light in which it was essential that they should 
sit throughout the performance and between the 
acts, for the means at the command of the Un- 
rivaled Attraction were not capable of compassing 
the usual alternations of illumination, and the 
full and permanent glare of splendor was reserved 
to suffuse the stage. The audience was itself an 
object of intense interest to the actors behind 
the scenes, and there was no interval in which the 
small rent made in the curtain for the purpose 
of observation was not utilized by one or another 
of the excited youths, tremulous with premonitions 
of a fiasco, from the time when the first groups 



THE JUGGLER. oil 

entered the hall to the triumphant moment when 
it became evident that all New Helvetia was turn- 
ing out to honor the occasion, and that they 
were to display their talents to a full house. It 
was only when the stir of preparation became tu- 
multuous — one or two intimations of impatience 
from the long-waiting audience serving to admon- 
ish the performers — that Lucien Royce found an 
opportunity to peer out in his turn upon the scene 
in the dusky clare-obscure. Here and there the 
yellow globes of the shaded lamps shed abroad 
their tempered golden lustre, and occasionally 
there came to his eye a pearly gleam from a flut- 
tering fan, or the prismatic glitter of a diamond, 
or the ethereal suggestion of a girl in white in 
the midst of such sombre intimations of red and 
brown and deeply purple and black in the costumes 
of the dark-robed elders that they might hardly be 
accounted as definite color in the scale of chromatic 
values. With such a dully rich background and 
the dim twilight about her, the figure and face of 
the girl he sought showed as if in the glamours of 
some inherent light, reminding him of that illumi- 
nating touch in the method of certain painters 
whose works he had seen in art galleries, in which 
the radiance seems to be in the picture, inde- 
pendent of the skylight, and as if equally visible 
in the darkest night. She wore a green dress 
of some silken texture, so faint of hue that the 
shadows of the soft folds appeared white. It was 
fashioned with a long, slim bodice, cut square in 



378 THE JUGGLER. 

the neck, and a high, flaring ruff of delicate old 
lace, stiff with a Medici effect, that rose framing 
the rounded throat and small head with its close 
and high-piled coils of black hair, through which 
was thrust a small comb of carved coral of the 
palest possible hue. She might have been a pic- 
ture, so still and silent she sat, so definitely did 
the light emanate from her, so completely did the 
effect of the pale, lustrous tints of her attire reduce 
to the vague nullities of a mere background the 
nebulous dark and neutral shades about her. How 
long Royce stood and gazed with all his heart in 
his eyes he never knew. He saw naught else. He 
heard naught of the stir of the audience, or the 
wild wind without, or the babel upon the stage 
where he was. He came to himself only when he 
was clutched by the arm and admonished to clear 
the track, for at last the curtain was to be rung 
up. 

What need to dwell on the tremulous eagerness 
and wild despair of that moment, — the glee club 
all ranged in order on the stage, and with heart- 
thumping expectation, the brisk and self-sufficient 
tinkle of the bell, the utter blank immovableness 
of the curtain, the subdued delight of the audience ? 
Another tintinnabulation, agitated and querulous; 
a mighty tug at the wings ; a shiver in the fabric, 
a sort of convulsion of the texture, and the curtain 
goes up in slow doubt, — all awry and bias, it is 
true, but still revealing the "musicianers," a trifle 
dashed and taken aback, but meeting a warm and 



THE JUGGLER. 379 

reassuring reception which they do not dream is 
partly in tribute to the clownish tricks of the cur- 
tain. 

Koyce, suddenly all in heart, exhilarated by the 
mere sight of her, flung himself ardently into the 
preparations progressing in the close little pens on 
either side and at the rear of the stage. The 
walls of these were mere partitions reaching up 
only some ten feet toward the ceiling, and they 
were devoid of any exit save through the stage 
and the eye of the public. Hence it had been 
necessary that all essentials should be carefully 
looked to and provided in advance. Now and 
then, however, a wild alarum arose because of the 
apparent non-existence of some absolutely indis- 
pensable article of attire or furniture, succeeded 
by embarrassed silence on the part of the mourner 
when the thing in question was found, and a meek 
submission to the half -suppressed expletives of the 
rest of the uselessly perturbed company. It was 
a scene of mad turmoil. Young men already half 
clad in feminine attire were struggling with the 
remainder of their unaccustomed raiment, — the 
actors to take part in the farce "The New Wo- 
man." Others were in their white flannel suits, 
— no longer absolutely white, — hot, dusty, per- 
spiring, the scene-shifters and the curtain contin- 
gent, all lugubriously wiping their heated brows 
and blaming one another. The mandolin and 
banjo players, in faultless evening dress, stood out 
of the rush and kept themselves tidy. And now 



380 THE JUGGLER. 

arose a nice question, in the discussion of which 
all took part, becoming oblivious, for the time, of 
the audience without and the tra-la-la-ing of the 
glee singers, the boyish tones of argument occa- 
sionally rising above these melodious numbers. It 
was submitted that in case the audience should call 
for the author of "The New Woman," — and it 
would indeed be unmannerly to omit this tribute, 
— the playwright ought to be in full dress to re- 
spond, considering the circumstances, the place, 
and the full dress of the audience. And here he 
was in his white flannel trousers and a pink-and- 
white striped blazer at this hour of the night, and 
his room a quarter of a mile away in a pitching 
mountain rain, whither certain precisians would 
fain have him hie to bedizen himself. He listened 
to this with a downcast eye and a sinking heart, 
and doubtless would have acted on the admonition 
save for the ludicrous effect of emerging before 
the audience as he was, and returning to meet the 
same audience in the blaze of full-dress glory. 

"It 's no use talking," he said at last, decisively. 
" We are caught here like rats in a trap. There 
is no way of getting out without being seen. I 
wonder I didn't think to have a door cut." 

Repeatedly there rose on the air the voice of 
one who was a slow study repeating the glib lines 
of "The New Woman;" and once something very 
closely approximating a quarrel ensued upon the 
discovery that the budding author, already j)arsi- 
monious with literary material, had transferred a 



THE JUGGLER. 381 

joke from tlie mouth of one character to that of 
another ; the robbed actor came in a bounding fury 
and with his mother's false hair, mildly parted and 
waving away from his fierce, keen young face and 
flashing eyes, to demand of the author-manager 
its restoration. His decorous stiffly lined skirts 
bounced tumultuously with his swift springs for- 
ward, and his fists beneath the lace frill of his 
sleeves were held in a belligerent muscular adjust- 
ment. 

"It's 7W?/ joke," he asseverated vehemently, as 
if he had cracked it himself. "My speech is 
ruined without it, world without end ! I will have 
it back! I will! I will! " he declared as violently 
as if he could possess the air that would vibrate 
with the voice of the actor who went on first, and 
could put his collar on the syllables embodying the 
precious jest by those masterful words, "I will! " 

The manager had talents for diplomacy, as well 
he should. He drew the irate antique-seeming 
dame into the corner by the lace on the sleeve and, 
looking into the wild boyish face, adjured him, 
"Let him have it, Jack, for the love of Heaven. 
He does it so badly, and he is such a slow study, 
that I 'm afraid the first act will break down if I 
don't give it some vim; after you are once on, the 
thing will go and I shan't care a red." 

And so with the dulcet salve of a little judicious 
flattery peace came once more. 

Royce, as he took his place upon the narrow 
stage, felt as if he had issued from the tumultuous 



382 THE JUGGLER. 

currents of some wild rapids into the deep and 
restful placidities of a dark untroubled pool. The 
air of comj)osure, the silence, the courteous atten- 
tion of the audience, all marked a transition so 
abrupt that it had a certain perturbing effect. He 
had never felt more ill at ease, and perhaps he had 
never looked more composed than when he advanced 
and stood bowing at the footlights. He had for- 
gotten his assumed character of a mountaineer, his 
coarse garb, his intention to seek some manner 
that might consist with both. He was inaugurat- 
ing his share of the little amateur entertainment 
with a grace and address and refinement of style 
that were astonishing his audience far more than 
aught of magic that his art could command, al- 
though his resources were not slight. He seemed 
some well-bred and talented youth of the best so- 
ciety, dressed for a rural role in private theatri- 
cals. Now and again there was a flutter of in- 
quiry here and there in the audience, answered by 
the whispered conclusions of Tom or Jack, retailed 
by mother or sister. For the youth of New Hel- 
vetia Springs had accepted the explanation that he 
was out of a position, "down on his luck," and 
hoped to get a school in Etowah Cove. He had. 
gone by the sobriquet of " the handsome mountain- 
eer," and then "the queer mountaineer," and now, 
"He is no mountaineer," said the discerning Judge 
Fordyce to a man of his own stamp at his elbow. 

What might have been the estimate of the two 
strangers none could say. They sat on opposite 



THE JUGGLER. 383 

sides of the building, taking no note o£ each other, 
both steadily gazing at the alert and graceful figure 
and the handsome face alight with intelligence, 
and made no sign. One might have been more 
competent than the other to descry inconsistencies 
between the status which the dress suggested and 
the culture and breeding which the manner and 
accent and choice of language betokened, but both 
listened motionless as if absorbed in the prestidigi- 
tator's words. 

Royce had made careful selection among his 
feats in view of the character of his audience, and 
the sustaining of such poor dignity as he might 
hope to possess in Miss Fordyce's estimation. 
There were no uncouth tricks of swallowing impos- 
sible implements of cutlery, which sooth to say 
would have vastly delighted the row of juvenile 
spectators on the front bench. Perhaps they were 
as well content, however, with the appearance of 
two live rabbits from the folds of the large white 
silk handkerchief of an old gentleman in the crowd, 
borrowed for the purpose, and the little boy who 
came up to receive the article for restoration to its 
owner went into an ecstasy of cackling delight, 
with the whole front row in delirious refrain, to 
find that he had one of the live rabbits in each of 
the pockets of his jacket, albeit the juggler had 
merely leaned over the footlights to hand him back 
the handkerchief. The audience applauded with 
hearty good will, and a general ripple of smiles 
played over the upturned faces. 



384 THE JUGGLER. 

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the juggler, pick- 
ing up a small and glittering object from the table, 
"if I may ask your attention, you will observe that 
each chamber of this revolver is loaded " — 

With his long, delicate, deft white hands he had 
turned aside the barrel, and now held the weapon 
up, the two parts at right angles, each cartridge 
distinctly visible to the audience. 

But a sudden authoritative voice arose. "No 
pistols!" called out a sober paterfamilias, respon- 
sible for four boys in the audience. 

"No pistols! " echoed Judge Fordyce. 

There had been a momentary shrinking among 
the ladies, whose curiosity, however, was greater 
than their fear, and who sustained a certain doubt- 
ful and disaj)pointed aspect. But the shadowy 
bullet-heads of the whole front row of small boys 
were turned with one accord in indignant and un- 
filial protest. 

Royce understanding in a moment, with a quick 
smile shifted all the cartridges out into his hand, 
held up the pistol once more so that all might see 
the light through the empty chambers of the cylin- 
der, then, with an exaggerated air of caution, laid 
all the shells in a small heap on one of the little 
tables and the pistol, still dislocated, on another 
table, the breadth of the stage between them ; and 
with a satiric "Hey! Presto!" bowed, laughing 
and complaisant, to a hearty round of applause 
from the elders. For although his compliance 
with their behests had been a trifle ironical, the 



THE JUGGLER. ■ 385 

youths of New Helvetia were not accustomed to 
submit with so good a grace or so completely. 

The two elderly strangers accommodated the 
expression of their views to the evident opinion of 
those of their time of life, applauding when the 
gentlemen about them applauded, maintaining an 
air of interest when they were receptive and atten- 
tive. Was it possible, one might wonder in look- 
ing at them, that differences so essential could be 
unremarked — that it was not patent to the most 
casual observer that they had some far more seri- 
ous reason for their presence than the indulgent 
laudation of the amateur entertainment which in- 
spired the friends and relatives of the youthful 
j)erformers? The perspicacity of the casual ob- 
server, however, was hampered by the haze of the 
pervasive obscurity; from the stage each might 
seem to the transient glance merely a face among 
many faces, the divergences of which could be dis- 
cerned only wl>en some intention or interest in- 
formed the gaze. 

Lucien Royce saw only that oasis in the gloom 
where the high lights of Miss Fordyce's delicately 
tinted costume shone in the dusk. He was keenly 
mindful of a flash of girlish laughter, the softly 
luminous glance of her eye, the glimmer of her 
white teeth as her pink lips curled, the young de- 
light in her face. How should he care to note the 
null, impassive countenance of the one man, the 
grizzled stolid bourgeois aspect of the other? 

The manager, keenly alive to the success of the 



386 THE JUGGLER. 

entertainment, advanced a number of the pro- 
gramme since the pistol trick was discarded. 
Having observed the fate of this from the wings, 
he handed to Royce a flower-pot filled with earth 
for a feat which it had been his intention to reserve 
until after the first act of the play. 

"Now, ladies and gentlemen," said the juggler, 
"oblige me by looking at this acorn. It is consid- 
ered quite harmless. True, it will shoot, too, if 
you give it half a chance; but I am told," with a 
glance of raillery, "that its projectile effects are not 
deleterious in any respect to the human anatomy." 

The ladies who had been afraid of the pistol 
laughed delightedly, and the guyed elderly gentle- 
men good-naturedly responded in another round of 
applause, so grateful were they to have no shooting 
on the stage, and no possible terrifying accidents 
to their neighbors, themselves, and their respec- 
tive families. 

"There is nothing but pulverized earth in this 
flower -pot," continued the juggler, running his 
hand through the fine white sand, and shaking off 
the particles daintily, "a little too sandy to suit 
my views and experience in arboriculture, but we 
shall see — what we shall see ! I plant the acorn, 
thus! I throw this cloth over the flower-pot, 
drawing it up in a peak to give air. And now, 
since we shall have to wait for a few moments, I 
shall, with your kind indulgence, beguile the te- 
dium, in imitation of the jongleurs of eld, with a 
little song." 



THE JUGGLER. 387 

The audience sat patient, expectant. A guitar 
was lying where one of the glee singers had left it. 
Eoyce turned and caught it up, then advanced 
down toward the footlights, and paused in the pic- 
turesque attitude of the serenader of the lyric 
stage. He drew from the instrument a few strong 
resonant chords, and then it fell a-tinkling again. 

But what new life was in the strings, what mel- 
ody in the air? And as his voice rose, the scene - 
shifters were silent in the glare of the pens ; the 
actors thronged the wings; the audience sat spell- 
bound. 

No great display of art, to be sure! But the 
mountain wilds were without, and the mountain 
winds were abroad, and there was something 
strangely sombre, romantic, akin to the suggestion 
and the sound in the rich swelling tones of the 
young voice so passionately vibrant on the air. 
Though obviously an amateur, he sang with a care- 
ful precision that bespoke fairly good advantages 
amply improved, but the singing was instinct with 
that ardor, that love of the art, that enthusiasm, 
which no training can supply or create. The 
music and the words were unfamiliar, for they 
were his own. Neither was devoid of merit. In- 
deed, a musical authority once said that his songs 
would have very definite promise if it were not for 
a determined effort to make all the science of har- 
mony tributary to the display of Lucien Royce's 
high A. A recurrent strain now and again came, 
interfluent through the drift of melody, rising with 



388 THE JUGGLER. 

a certain ecstatic elasticity to that sustained tone, 
which was soft, yet strong, and as sweet as summer. 

As his voice thus rang out into the silence with 
all its pathos and its passion, he turned his eyes 
on the eyes he had so learned to love, and met 
those orbs, full of delight and of surprise and a 
patent admiration, fixed upon his face. The rest 
of the song he sang straight at Gertrude Fordyce, 
and she looked at the singer, her gaze never swerv- 
ing. For once his plunging heart in triumph felt 
he had caught and held her attention; for once, 
he said to himself, she did not look at him as im- 
personally as if he were the ^ide of the wall. 

It was over at last, and he was bowing his ac- 
knowledgments to the wildly applauding audience. 
The jugglery was at a discount. He had drawn 
off the white cloth from the flower-pot, where a 
strongly rooted young oak shoot two feet high 
appeared to have grown while he sang. But the 
walls of the room resounded with the turbulent 
clamors of an insistent encore. Only the eyes of 
the rustic-looking stranger were starting out of his 
head as he gazed at the oak shoot, and there came 
floating softly through his lips the involuntary 
comment, "By gum! " 

It was necessary in common courtesy to sing at 
least the last stanza again, and as the juggler did 
so he was ahnost happy in singing it anew to her 
starry eyes, and noting the flush on her cheeks, 
and the surprise and pleasure in her beautiful face. 
The miracle of the oak shoot went unexplained. 



THE JUGGLER. 389 

for all New Helvetia was still clapping a recall 
when the juggler, bowing and bowing, with the 
guitar in his hand, and ever retreating as he bowed, 
stepped off at one of the wings for instructions, 
and was met there by renewed acclamations from 
his fellow entertainers. 

"You 'd better bring on the play if you don't 
want to hold forth here till the small hours," he 
said, flushed, and panting, and joyous once more. 

But the author-manager was of a different mind. 
The child of his fancy was dear to him, although 
it was a very grotesque infant, as indeed it was 
necessary that it should be. He deprecated sub- 
mitting it to the criticism of an unwilling audience, 
still clamoring for the reappearance of another 
attraction. However, there would not be time 
enough to respond to this encore, and yet bring 
the farce on with the deliberation essential to its 
success, and the effect of all its little points. 

"You seem to be the star of the evening," he 
said graciously. "And I should like to hear you 
sing again myself. But we really haven't time. 
As they are so delighted with you, suppose, by 
way of letting them down gently, we give them 
another sight of you by moving up the basket trick 
on the programme, instead of letting it come be- 
tween the second and third acts of the play, — we 
have had to advance the. feat that was to have 
come between the first and second acts, anyhow, 
— and have no jugglery between the acts." 

Royce readily agreed, but the manager still hesi- 



390 THE JUGGLER. 

tated while the house thumped and clapped its 
recall in great impatience, and a young hobblede- 
hoy slipped slyly upon the stage and facetiously 
bowed his acknowledgments, with his hand upon 
his heart, causing spasms of delight among the 
juvenile contingent and some laughter from the 
elders. 

Said the hesitating manager, unconscious of 
this interlude, "I don't half like that basket trick." 

"Why? " demanded the juggler, surprised. 
"It's the best thing I can do. And when we 
rehearsed it, I thought we had it down to a fine 
point." 

"Yes," still hesitating, "but I'm afraid it's 
dangerous." 

The juggler burst into laughter. "It 's as dan- 
gerous as a pistol loaded with blank cartridges! 
See here," he cried joyously, turning with out- 
spread arms to the group of youths fantastic in 
their stage toggery, "I call you all to witness — 
if ever Millden Seymour hurts me, I intended to 
let him do it. Come on ! " he exclaimed in a differ- 
ent tone. "I 'm obliged to have a confederate in 
this, and we have rehearsed it without a break 
time and again." 

In a moment more they were on the stage, side 
by side, and the audience, seeing that no more 
minstrelsy was in order, became reconciled to the 
display of magic. A certain new element of inter- 
est was infused into the proceedings by the fact 
that another person was introduced, and that it 



THE JUGGLER. 391 

was Seymour who made all the preparations, inter- 
spersing them with jocular remarks to the audi- 
ence, while the juggler stood by, silent and acqui- 
escent. He seemed to be the victim of the manager, 
in some sort, and the juvenile spectators, with 
beating hearts and open mouths and serious eyes, 
watched the proceedings taken against him as his 
arms were bound with a rope and then a bag of 
rough netting was slipped over him and sewed 
up. 

"I have him fast and safe now," the manager 
declared. "^'He cannot delude us with any more 
of his deceits, I am sure." 

The juggler was placed at full length on the 
floor and a white cloth was thrown over him. The 
manager then exhibited a large basket with a top 
to it, which he also thrust under the cloth. Tak- 
ing advantage of the evident partisanship of the 
children for their entertainer, he spoke for a few 
minutes in serious and disapproving terms of the 
deceits of the eye, and made a very pretty moral 
arraignment of these dubious methods of taking 
pleasure, which was obviously received in high 
dudgeon. He then turned about to lead his cap- 
tive, hobbled and bound, off the stage. Lifting 
the cloth he found no trace of the juggler; the 
basket with the top beside it was revealed, and 
on the floor was the netting, — a complete case 
with not a mesh awry through which he could have 
escaped. The manager stamped about in the empty 
basket and finally emerged putting on the top and 



392 THE JUGGLER. 

cording it up. Whereupon one antagonistic youth 
in the audience opined that the juggler was in the 
basket. 

"He is, is he?" said the manager, looking up 
sharply at the bullet-headed row. "Then what 
do you think of this, and this, and this? " 

He had drawn the sharp bowie-knife with which 
Royce had furnished him, and was thrusting it up 
to the hilt here, there, everywhere through the 
interstices of the wickerwork. This convinced the 
audience that in some inscrutable manner the 
juggler had been spirited away, impossible though 
it might seem. The stage, in the full glare of all 
the lamps at New Helvetia Springs, was in view 
from every jaart of the house, and it was evident 
that the management of the Unrivaled Attraction 
was incapable of stage machinery, trap-doors, or 
any similar appliance. In the midst of the discus- 
sion, very general over the house, the basket began 
to roll about. The manager viewed it with the 
affectation of starting eyes and agitated terror for 
a moment. Then, pouncing upon it in wrath, he 
loosened the cords, took off the top, and pulled out 
the juggler, who was received with acclamations, 
and who retired, bowing and smiling and backing 
off the stage, the hero of the occasion. 

Seymour behind the scenes was giving orders 
to ring down the curtain to prepare the stage for 
"The New Woman." 

"Don't do it unless you mean it for keeps. 
Mill," remonstrated the property-man. "The 



THE JUGGLER. , 393 

devil 's in the old rag, I believe. It might not go 
up again easily, and I 'm sure, from the racket out 
there, they are going to have the basket trick over 
again." 

For the front row of bullet-heads was conduct- 
ing itself like a row of gallery gods, and efferves- 
cing with whistlings and shrill cries. The ap- 
plause was general and tumultuous, growing louder 
when the over-cautious father called out "No pis- 
tols and no knives / " 

"Oh, they can take care of themselves," said a 
former adherent of his proposition, for the feat 
was really very clever, and very cleverly exploited, 
and he was ready to accredit a, considerable amount 
of sagacity to youths who could get up so amusing 
an entertainment. No one was alert to notice — 
save his mere presence as some messenger or pur- 
veyor of properties — a dazed-looking young moun- 
taineer, dripping with the rain, who walked down 
the main aisle and stepped awkwardly over the 
footlights, upon the stage. He paused bewildered 
at the wings, and Lucien Royce behind the scenes, 
turning, found himself face to face with Owen 
Haines. The sight of the wan, ethereal counte- 
nance brought back like some unhallowed spell the 
real life he had lived of late into the vanishing 
dream-life he was living now. But the actualities 
are constraining. "You want me? "Tie said, with 
a sudden premonition of trouble. 

"I hev s'arched fur you-uns fur days," Haines 
replied, a strange compassion in his eyes, contem- 



394 THE JUGGLER. 

plating which Lucien Eoyce felt his blood go cold. 
"But the Simses deceived me ez ter whar ye be; 
they never told me till ter-night, an' then I hed 
ter tell 'em why I wanted yoii-uns." 

"Why?" demanded Royce, spellbound by the 
look in the man's eyes, and almost overmastered by 
the revulsion of feeling in the last moment, the 
quaking of an unnamed terror at his heart. 

Nevertheless, with his acute and versatile facul- 
ties he heard the clamors of the recall still thun- 
dering in the auditorium, he noted the passing of 
the facetiously bedight figures for the farce. He 
was even aware of glances of curiosity from one or 
two of the scene-shifters, and had the prudence to 
draw Haines, who heard naught and saw only the 
face before him, into a corner. 

"Why?" reiterated Royce. "Why do you 
want me? " 

"Bekase," said Haines, "Peter Knowles seen 
ye fling them queer shoes an' belt an' clothes 
inter the quicklime, an' drawed the idee ez ye hed 
slaughtered somebody bodaciously, an' kivered 'em 
thar too." 

The juggler reddened slightly at the mention of 
the jaunty attire and the thought of its sacrifice, 
but he was out of countenance before the sentence 
was concluded, and gravely dismayed. 

"Oh, pshaw!" he exclaimed, seeking to reas- 
sure himself. "They would have to prove that 
somebody is dead to make that charge stick." 

Then he realized the seriousness of such an ac- 



THE JUGGLER. 395 

cusation, the necessity of accounting for himself 
before a legal investigation, and this, to escape 
one false criminal charge, must needs lead to a 
prosecution for another equally false. The alter- 
native of flight presented itself instantly. "I can 
explain later, if necessary, as well as now," he 
thought. "I'm a thousand times obliged to you 
for telling me," he added aloud, but to his amaze- 
ment and terror the man was wringing his hands 
convulsively and his face was contorted with the 
agony of a terrible expectation. 

"Don't thank me," he said huskily. Then, with 
a sudden hope, "Is thar enny way out'n this place 
'ceptin' yon ? " he nodded his head toward the ball- 
room on the other side of the partition. 

"No, none," gasped Royce, his nerves beginning 
to comprehend the situation, while it still baffled 
his brain. 

"I 'm too late, I 'm too late ! " exclaimed Haines 
in a tense, suppressed voice. "The sher'ff 's thar, 
'mongst the others, in that room. I viewed him 
thar a minit ago." 

Assuming that he knew the worst, Royce 's cour- 
age came back. With some wild idea of devising 
a scheme to meet the emergency, he sprang upon 
the vacant stage, on which the curtain had been 
rung down despite the applause, still resolutely 
demanding a repetition of the feat, and through 
the rent in the trembling fabric swiftly surveyed 
the house with a new and, alas, how different a 
motive! His eyes instantly fixed upon the rustic 



396 THE JUGGLER. 

face, the hair parted far to the side, as the sheriff 
vigorously stamped his feet and clapped his hands 
in approbation. That oasis of refined, ideal light 
where Miss Fordyce sat did not escape Royce's at- 
tention even at this crisis. Had he indeed brought 
this sorry, ignoble fate upon himself that he might 
own one moment in her thoughts, one glance of 
her eye, that he might sing his song to her ear? 
He had certainly achieved this, he thought sardoni- 
cally. She would doubtless remember him to the 
last day she should live. He wondered if they 
would iron him in the presence of the ladies. 
Could he count upon his strong young muscles to 
obey his will and submit without resistance when 
the officers should lay their hands upon him, and 
thus avoid a scene? 

And all at once — perhaps it was the sweet look 
in her face that made all gentle things seem possi- 
ble — it occurred to him that he despaired too 
easily. An arrest might not be in immediate con- 
templation, — the corjnis delicti was impossible of 
proof. He could surely make such disposition of 
his own property as seemed to him fit, and the 
explanation that he was at odds with his friends, 
dead-broke, thrown out of business in the recent 
panic, might pass muster with the rural officer, 
since no crime could be discovered to involve the 
destruction of the clothes. Thus he might still 
remain unidentified with Lucien Royce, who pre- 
tended to be dead and was alive, who had had in 
trust a large sum of money in a belt which was 



THE JUGGLER. 397 

found upon another man, robbed, and perhaps mur- 
dered for it. The sheriff of Kildeer County had 
never dreamed of the like of that, he was very sure. 
The next moment his heart sank like lead, for 
there amongst the audience, quite distinct in the 
glooms, was the sharp, keen, white face of a man 
he had seen before, — a detective. It was but 
once, yet, with that idea of crime rife in his mind, 
he placed the man instantly. He remembered a 
court-room in Memphis, during the trial of a cer- 
tain notable case, where he had chanced to loiter 
in the tedium of waiting for a boat on one of his 
trips through the city, and he had casually watched 
this man as he gave his testimony. His presence 
here was significant, conclusive, to be interpreted 
far otherwise than any mission of the sheriff of the 
county. Royce did not for one moment doubt that 
it was in the interests of the Marble Company, the 
tenants of the estate per autre vie, although the 
criminal charge might emanate directly from the 
firm whose funds had so mysteriously disappeared 
from his keeping, whose trust must now seem so 
basely betrayed. There was no possible escape; 
the stanch walls of the building were unbroken 
even by a window, and the only exit from behind 
the partition was through the stage itself in full 
view of the watchful eyes of the officers. Any 
effort, any action, would merely accelerate the 
climax, precipitate the shame of the arrest he 
dreaded, — and in her presence ! He felt how hard 
the heart of the cestui que vie was thumping at the 



398 THE JUGGLER. 

prospect of the summary resuscitation. He said 
to himself, with his ironical habit of mind, that he 
had found dying a far easier matter. But there 
was no responsive satire in the hunted look of his 
hot, wild, glancing eyes, the quiver of every muscle, 
the cold thrills that successively trembled through 
the nervous fibres. He looked so unlike himself 
for the moment, as he turned with a violent start 
on feeling the touch of a hand on his arm, that 
Seymour paused with some deprecation and uncer- 
tainty. Then with a renewed intention the man- 
ager said persuasively, "You won't mind doing 
it over again, will you? You see they won't be 
content without it." 

A certain element of surprise was blended with 
the manager's cogitations which he remembered 
afterward rather than realized at the moment. It 
had to do with the altered aspect of the man, — a 
sudden grave tumultuous excitement which his 
manner and glance bespoke ; but the perception of 
this was subacute in Seymour's mind and subordi- 
nate to the awkward dilemma in which he found 
himself as manager of the little enterprise. There 
was not time, in justice to the rest of the pro- 
gramme, to repeat the basket trick, and had the 
farce been the work of another he would have 
rung the curtain up forthwith on its first scene. 
But the pride and sensitiveness of the author for- 
bade the urging of his own work upon the atten- 
tion of an audience still clamorously insistent upon 
the repetition of another attraction, and hardly 



THE JUGGLER. 399 

likely, if balked of tliis, to be fully receptive to 
the real merits of the little play. 

Seymour remembered afterward, but did not 
note at the time, the obvious effort with which the 
juggler controlled his agitation. "Oh, anything 
goes I" he assented, and in a moment more the 
curtain had glided up with less than its usual con- 
vulsive resistance. They were standing again to- 
gether with composed aspect in the brilliance of 
the footlights, and Seymour, with a change of 
phrase and an elaboration of the idea, was dilating 
afresh upon the essential values of the positive in 
life ; the possible pernicious effects of any delusion 
of the senses; the futility of finding pleasure in 
the false, simply because of the flagrancy of its 
falsity ; the deleterious moral effects of such exhi- 
bitions upon the very young, teaching them to 
love the acrobatic lie instead of the lame truth, — 
from all of which he deduced the propriety of tying 
the juggler up for the rest of the evening. But 
the bullet-heads were not as dense as they looked. 
They learned well when they learned at all, and 
the pauses of this rodomontade were filled with 
callow chuckles and shrill whinnies of appreciative 
delight, anticipative of the wonder to come. They 
now viewed with eager forwarding interest the 
juggler's bonds, little dreaming what grim pro- 
phecy he felt in their restraint, and the smallest 
boy of the lot shrilly sang out, when all was done, 
"Give him another turn of the rope! " 

Seymour, his blond face flushed by the heat and 



400 THE JUGGLER. 

his exertions to the hue of his pink-and-white 
blazer, ostentatiously wrought another knot, and 
down the juggler went on the floor, encased in the 
unbroken netting; the cloth was thrown over the 
man and the basket, and Seymour turned anew to 
the audience and took up the thread of his dis- 
course. It came as trippingly off his tongue as 
before, and in the dusky gray-purple haze, the 
seeming medium in which the audience sat, fair, 
smiling faces, full of expectation and attention, 
looked forth their ajjproval, and now and again 
broke into laughter. When, having concluded by 
announcing that he intended to convey the discom- 
fited juggler off the stage, he found naught under 
the cloth but the empty net without a mesh awry, 
the man having escaped, his rage was a trifle more 
pronounced than before. With a wild gesture he 
tossed the net out to the spectators to bid them 
observe how the villain had outwitted him, and 
then sprang into the basket and stamped tumultu- 
ously all around in the interior, evidently covering 
every square inch of its surface, while the detec- 
tive's keen eyes watched with an eager intensity, 
as if the only thought in his mind concerned the 
miracle of the juggler's withdrawal. Out Sey- 
mour plunged finally, and with dogged resolution 
he put the lid on and began to cord up the basket 
as if for departure. 

"Save the little you 've got left," whinnied out 
a squirrel-toothed mouth from the front bench, 
almost too broadly a-grin for articulation. 



THE JUGGLER. 401 

"Get a move on ye, — get a move! " shouted 
another of the callow youngsters, reveling in the 
fictitious plight of the discomfited manager as if it 
were real. 

He seemed to resent it. He looked frowningly 
over the footlights at the front row, as it hugged 
itself and squirmed on the bench and cackled in 
ecstasy. 

"I wish I had him here! " he exclaimed gruffly. 
"I'd settle him — with this — and this — and 
this! " Each word was emphasized with the suc- 
cessive thrusts of the sharj) blade of the bowie- 
knife through the wickerwork. 

"That 's enough ! That 's enough ! " the remon- 
strant elderly gentleman in the audience admon- 
ished him, and he dropped the blade and came 
forward to beg indulgence for the unseemly and 
pitiable position in which he found himself placed. 
He had barely turned his back for a moment, 
when this juggler whom he had taken so much 
pains to secure, in order to protect the kind and 
considerate audience from further deceits of a 
treacherous art, mysteriously disappeared, and 
whither he was sure he could not imagine. He 
hesitated for a moment and looked a trifle em- 
barrassed, for this was the point at which the 
basket should begin to roll along the floor. He 
gave it a covert glance, but it was motionless where 
he had left it. Raising his voice, he repeated the 
words as with indignant emphasis, thinking that 
the juggler had not caught the cue. He went on 



402 THE JUGGLER. 

speaking at random, but his words came less freely; 
the audience sat expectant; the basket still lay 
motionless on the floor. Seeing that he must needs 
force the crisis, he turned, exclaiming with up- 
lifted hands, "Do my eyes deceive me, or is that 
basket stirring, rolling on the floor?" 

But no ; the basket lay as still as he had left it. 
There was a moment of tense silence in the audi- 
ence. His face grew suddenly white and chill, his 
eyes dilated — fixed on something dark, and slow, 
and sinuous, trickling down the inclined plane of 
the stage. lie sprang forward with a shrill excla- 
mation, and, catching uj) the bowie-knife, severed 
with one stroke the cords that bound the basket. 

"Are you hurt?" he gasped in a tremulous 
voice to the silence beneath the lid, and as he 
tossed it aside he recoiled abruptly, rising to his 
feet with a loud and poignant cry, " Oh, my God ! 
he is dead! he is dead! " 

The sudden transition from the purely festival 
character of the atmosphere to the purlieus of grim 
tragedy told heavily on every nerve. There was 
one null moment blank of comprehension, and 
then women were screaming, and more than one 
fainted; the clamor of overturned benches added 
to the confusion, as the men, with grim set faces 
and startled eyes, pressed forward to the stage; 
the children cowered in mute affright close below 
the footlights, except one small creature who 
thought it a part of the fun, not dreaming what 
death might be, and was laughing aloud in high- 



THE JUGGLER. 403 

keyed mirth down in the dusky gloom. A physi- 
cian among the summer sojourners, on a flying visit 
for a breath of mountain air, was the first man to 
reach the stage, and, with the terror-stricken Sey- 
mour, drew the long lithe body out and straight- 
ened it on the floor, as the curtain was lowered to 
hide the ghastly mise en scene which it might be 
terror to women and children to remember. His 
ready hand desisted after a glance. The man had 
died from the first stroke of the bowie-knife, pene- 
trating his side, and doubtless lacerating the outer 
tissues of the heart. The other strokes were regis- 
tered, — - the one on his hand, the other, a slight 
graze, on the neck. A tiny package had fallen on 
the floor as the hasty hands had torn the shirt 
aside from the wound : the deft professional fingers 
unfolded it, — a bit of faded flower, a wild purple 
verbena; the physician looked at it for a moment, 
and tossed it aside in the blood on the floor, unin- 
terested. The pericardium was more in his line. 
He was realizing, too, that he coidd not start to- 
morrow, as he had intended, for his oflice and his 
rounds among his patients. The coroner's jury 
was an obstinate impediment, and his would be 
expert testimony. 

UxDon this inquest, held incongruously enough 
in the ballroom, the facts of the information which 
Owen Haines had brought to the juggler and the 
presence of the oflicers in the audience were eli- 
cited, and added to the excitements incident to the 
event. The friends of young Seymour, who was 



404 THE JUGGLER. 

overwhelmed by the tragedy, believed and con- 
tended that since escape from prosecution for some 
crime was evidently impossible, the juggler had in 
effect committed suicide by holding up his left 
arm that the knife might pierce a vital part. Thus 
they sought to avert the sense of responsibility 
which a man must needs feel for so terrible a deed 
wrought, however inadvertently, by his own hand. 
But crime as a factor seemed doubtful. The 
sheriff, indeed, upon the representations of Sims, 
supplemented by the mystery of the lime-kiln 
which Knowles had disclosed, had induced the 
detective to accompany him to the mountains to 
seek to identify the stranger as a defaulting cashier 
from one of the cities for whose apprehension a 
goodly amount of money would be paid. But in 
no respect did Royce correspond to the perpetrator 
of any crime upon the detective's list. 

"He needn't have been afraid of me," he ob- 
served dryly; "I saw in a minute he wasn't our 
fellow. And I was just enjoying myself mightily." 

The development of the fact of the presence of 
the officers and the juggler's knowledge that they 
were in the audience affected the physician's testi- 
mony and his view of the occurrence. He ac- 
counted it an accident — the nerve of the young 
man, shaken by the natural anxiety at finding 
himself liable to immediate arrest, was not suffi- 
cient to carry him through the feat; he failed to 
shift position with the celerity essential to the 
basket trick, and the uplifting of the arm, which 



THE JUGGLER. 405 

left the body unprotected to receive the blow, was 
but the first effort to compass the swift movements 
necessary to the feat. The unlucky young man- 
ager was exonerated from all blame in the matter, 
but the verdict was death by accident. 

Nevertheless, throughout all the years since, the 
argument continues. Along the verge of those 
crags overlooking the valley, in the glamours of 
a dreamy golden haze, with the amethystine moun- 
tains on the horizon reflecting the splendors of the 
sunset sky, and with the rich content of the sum- 
mer solstice in the perfumed air; or amongst the 
ferns about the fractured cliffs whence the spring 
wells up with a tinkling tremor and exhilarant 
freshness and a cool, cool splashing as of the veri- 
table fountain of youth; or in the shadowy twi- 
light of the long, low building where the balls go 
crashing down the alleys; or sometimes even in 
the ballroom in pauses of the dance when the 
music is but a plaint, haK-joy, haK-pain, and the 
wind is singing a wild and mystic refrain, and the 
moonlight comes in at the windows and lies in 
great blue-white silver rhomboids on the floor de- 
spite the dull yellow glow of the lamps, — in all 
these scenes which while yet in life Lucien Royce 
haunted, with a sense of exile and a hopeless sev- 
erance, as of a man who is dead, the mystery of 
his fate revives anew and yet once more, and con- 
tinues unexplained. Conjecture fails, conclusions 
are vain, the secret remains. Hey ! Presto ! The 
juggler has successfully exploited his last feat. 



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